Extreme Poverty

Here’s the good news, extreme poverty has decreased in underdeveloped countries throughout the world even faster than was predicted. These are the figures of the World Bank which defines extreme poverty as people living on less the $1.25 a day. This is based on figures between 2005 and 2008 which exceeded the goals sets by United Nations Millennium Development Goal. The big winner was China which reduced by 7 million those living in dire poverty between 1981 and 2008.

Now the bad news; that trend is reversed in our own country. The World Bank doesn’t study developed countries but the National Poverty Center show that household in the U.S.A. living under $2.00 a day. From 1996 to 2011 has doubled; this includes children an increase of 1.4 million to 2.8 million.

Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, explains in a blog post:

The 1996 law replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which primarily provided cash assistance to eligible families, with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, which provided states with a fixed level of funding which they could use for many different purposes. The report found that the rate of extreme poverty doubled for households overall but nearly tripled for female-headed households, which make up the bulk of the TANF caseload….

The sharp decline in the value of TANF benefits over time means that many TANF recipients remain extremely poor. Benefits are below half of the poverty line in every state. For a family of three, benefits are only about $2 per person per day in Mississippi and Tennessee and only slightly more than $2 per person per day in Alabama and South Carolina, for example.

In find this absolutely incredible. Here we have a political debate raging between saving the benefits of the huge corporations, super banks, and the super rich versus the poor and the middle class. But do you here a single word about these statistics? It’s embarrassing, it is an outrage, and it is immoral. Instead we hear some politicians condemning these poor for their laziness and lassitude. Perhaps it is time for Jesus to reenter the temple with his whip.