DCentric

The official poverty measure has long been seen as inadequate. It doesn’t include government benefits that many poor people receive, such as food stamps. It doesn’t look at expenses such as health care or taxes. And it doesn’t account for regional differences in the cost of living, which is why people like Sandra Killett of New York City might feel poor — even though the government says she isn’t.

“I make $29,000 [a year], but how much do I bring home?” she says.

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Wolff and Gittleman also find that because wealth transfers generally make up a bigger portion of the wealth of poor and middle-class people, they actually reduce wealth inequality, in aggregate. “Our simulations show that eliminating inheritances either in full or in part actually increases overall wealth inequality and, in particular, sharply reduces the share of the bottom 40 percent of the wealth distribution,” they write.

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About 8 percent of those residents receive welfare checks from a federal program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. But their eligibility only lasts five years.

“More than half of the clients we have on TANF have been on assistance for over five years,” [Department of Human Services Director David] Berns said. “We haven’t really had a community-focused way … into moving them into self-sufficiency, so they’ve languished in the system.”

The cutoff for TANF federal funding was put in place in 1996. But jurisdictions, including D.C., were slow to enforce that and often found supplemental funding through grants or other programs. Berns said the city is now spending several million dollars annually to keep paying benefits to individuals who ran out the clock on federal assistance.

Read more at: washingtonexaminer.com

Income inequality is an important measure because it shows how a society—whether that be a neighborhood, city or nation—is economically structured. It also helps explain, for example, why the District has one of the most vibrant economies in the country yet still has a very high unemployment rate. There are some District residents who are doing very well, but there are some who are doing very poorly.

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“The relationship between poverty, obesity, and fast-food restaurant use is more complicated than people realize,” [researcher J. Paul] Leigh says. “Fast-food restaurants aren’t the only factor contributing to low-income obesity.” That’s partly because the poorest Americans have too little cash to catch the eye of the McDonald’s marketing department. “McDonald’s and Burger King don’t cater to low-income families simply because they are not going to make that much money,” Leigh said. “They’re targeting middle-income families. The results of the study make complete sense from a business standpoint.”

The middle-class families who frequent the drive-through the most may have some money, but they tend to operate under a perpetual time crunch—less free time, more children, and little disposable income result in more quick trips to the Golden Arches. And they’re paying for the meals out of their own pockets—Leigh attributes the lack of low-income patrons at fast-food restaurants partially to the fact that food stamps are not accepted at most fast-food locations.

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