The Working Poor (52 page)

A jobs program she was counting on to pay for a certified nursing assistant course found her ineligible because she wasn’t on welfare and had a college degree. On paper, she looked too good to need help. She was deeply disappointed, because she had hoped to work in a nursing home. “I’ve got the personality,” she said. “It’s helping people, and I feel sorry for them.”

She was rejected also because it was thought that her back problem might preclude her lifting elderly patients. Indeed, her back worsened. Her chiropractor insisted that she not lift more than ten pounds, walk long distances, bend over, sit or stand more than two or three hours at a time, or raise her arms above her shoulders. So she applied for disability from Social Security, was turned down, appealed, and was turned down again.

Meanwhile, she took clerical classes to improve her typing and learn computer programs. But her teeth remained a defect. She couldn’t get used to her new dentures and didn’t wear them. “They either need to be adjusted, or I got to quit smoking, or just force myself to keep them in,” she declared.

Amber, her mildly retarded daughter, judged the move from New Hampshire to Indiana a good one, given the improvement in schooling. “A ll they were giving me up there [in New Hampshire] was how to clean, and I was doing it for Mom already,” Amber said. In Indiana, she was taking
child development, math, government, typing, and other challenging courses. After graduation from high school the next year, she would enroll in a vocational rehabilitation program. She still could not read.

So, the wrenching move from the New Hampshire town of Claremont to the Indiana city of Muncie remained a mixed decision. “Amber has had a good two years,” Caroline said, “and has really grown a lot and has matured a lot.” Still, selling her house for no profit at $79,000 nagged at her, especially since it was again up for sale, she saw on-line, this time for over $100,000. “It’s making me sick,” Caroline said, “ ’cause I didn’t make nothing on it.”

“Peaches”
(
this page
–
this page
,
this page
–
this page
), the homeless woman much abused in childhood, seemed to enjoy a permanent recovery by way of the holistic job-training program run by So Others Might Eat.

She now ran a mail room for one of Xerox’s clients, a private firm in Washington, which meant increased responsibility and a salary of $26,000 a year. Her silk flower arrangements began to catch on for baby showers, and she regularly set up a folding table where she sold them in a busy part of northeast Washington, D.C.

She felt good enough about herself to have a homecoming that helped her reconcile with the past. She returned to a church on Maryland’s Eastern Shore where she had been raised, spoke to the congregation, and gave gift baskets in appreciation to several elderly parishioners for their support during her painful childhood. “They were stunned,” she said. “One lady, I was always welcome in her home. I told her when I was sitting somewhere in a bus stop, hungry and bruised, I was thinking about some biscuits coming out of her oven.”

Peaches remembered the church as a true sanctuary, a place of dignity, good order, beautiful clothes. The careful way the women dressed remained a sign, in subsequent years, that life could have beauty and solace. “They were in tears,” Peaches said. “ ‘I didn’t know you ever thought of me.’

“ ‘Yes, sitting there with your hats on, how you held your heads high. It was inspirational, even when I was at my very lowest.’ ”

To this homecoming on the Eastern Shore came her foster brother, from Philadelphia, for a moving reconnection. His children, embracing her as “auntie,” gave her a real family that made her voice bubble as she talked about being part of something larger. “It’s just absolutely wonderful to feel like you have someone who really cares about you.”

Then, finally, Peaches found a good man, “a nice young gentleman, not hateful at all,” she said. He worked for Washington Gas, installing lines and repairing leaks. “I’m hoping to get married,” she announced. “We’re looking to buy a house.”

When I called her to check her address for mailing a copy of the book, I mentioned that she would recognize herself, although I had honored her request to call her “Peaches” instead of using her name. She said in a bright voice, “Oh, you can use my real name now!”

It is Celestine Travers.

1.
From the poem by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

2.
Richard A. Oppel, Jr.,
New York Times,
Dec. 18, 2000, p. A19.

3.
“Surveying the Aftermath of the Storm: Changes in Family Finances from 2007 to 2009,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, March 2011.

4.
World in Figures
(London: The Economist Newspaper, 2003), pp. 76,79.

5.
Webster’s New International Dictionary,
2nd ed., unabridged (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam, 1956), p. 1935.

6.
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,
3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), p. 1419.

7.
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
(Springfield, Mass.: Merriam, 1983), p. 922.

8.
Michael Harrington,
The Other America
(Baltimore: Penguin, 1963), pp. 173-74.

9.
The Census Bureau “counts money income before taxes and does not include capital gains and noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and
food stamps).” The poverty threshold is adjusted annually on the basis of the consumer price index. See
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/povdef.html
.

10.
For more on the history of the poverty index, see Gordon M. Fisher, “The Development of the Orshansky Poverty Thresholds and Their Subsequent History as the Official U.S. Poverty Measure,”
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/povmeas/papers/orshanskyhtml
.

11.
Kathleen Short, John Iceland, and Thesia I. Garner,
Experimental Poverty Measures,
1998 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau),
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/povmeas/exppov/exppov.html
.

12.
Kathleen Short, “The Research Supplemental Poverty Measure,” Current Population Reports: 2010, Nov. 2011,
http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-241.pdf
.

13.
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,
Public Broadcasting System, Mar. 17,1997.

14.
Weekend Edition,
National Public Radio, Jan. 16, 2000.

1.
Robert Pear, “Aid to Poor Faces Tighter Scrutiny,”
New York Times,
February 5, 2003, p. Ai.

2.
According to Robert Lerman, an economist at the Urban Institute.

3.
According to analyses by TRAC at Syracuse University. David Cay Johnston,
New York Times,
Apr. 16, 2000, p. Ai, and Feb. 16, 2001, p. Ai,
http://www.trac.syr.edu/tracirs/findings/national/ratesTab3.html
.

4.
Rates quoted by H&R Block corporate headquarters were slightly lower in 2001: $29.95 for loans of $200–$500, $39.95 for $501–$1,000, $59.95 for
$I,OOI-$I,5OO,
$69.95 for
$I,5OI
–
$2,OOO,
and $86.95 for $2,ooi–$5,ooo.

5.
Details on H&R Block’s tax loans and resulting lawsuits are documented by David Cay Johnston,
New York Times,
July 2, 2000, Section 3, p. 1. See also his report of February 28, 2001, p. Ci.

6.
Christopher Bowe,
Financial Times,
Feb. 23, 2000, p. 11.

7.
Peter T Kilborn,
New York Times,
June 18,1999, p. Ai.

8.
Tamar Lewin,
New York Times,
Feb. 13, 2001, p. A14.

9.
Richard A. Oppel, Jr.,
New York Times,
Mar. 26,1999, p. Ci.

10.
Consumer Reports,
January 2001, pp. 20–24.

11.
Geraldine Fabrikant,
New York Times,
Dec. 3, 2000, Section 3, p. 17.

12.
Vivienne Hodges and Stuart Margulies,
Stanford çth Language Arts Coach Grade 4
(New York: Educational Design, 1998).

13.
Tom Wolfe,
The Bonfire of the Vanities
(New York: Bantam, 1987), pp. 142–43.

1.
Alan Weil and Kenneth Finegold,
Welfare Reform: The Next Act
(Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 2002). Introduction at
http://www.urban.org/pubs/welfare_reform/intro.html
.

2.
Robert Lerman, “Single Parents’ Earnings Monitor,” Urban Institute, Oct. 26, 2001, and Dec. 26, 2002, available at
www.urban.org
.

3.
Jack P. Shonkoff, Chapter 37.2, “Mental Retardation,” in Richard E. Behr-man, Robert M. Kliegman, and Ann M. Arvin, eds.,
Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics,
16th ed. (Philadelphia: Saunders, 2000), pp. 126–29.

4.
Barbara Ehrenreich, “Two-Tiered Morality,”
New York Times,
June 30, 2002, Section 4, p. 15. Also, Ehrenreich,
Nickel and Dimed
(New York: Holt, 2001), p.146.

5.
Now with Bill Moyers,
PBS, Nov. 8, 2002.

1.
Sweatshop Watch’s member organizations are the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Korean Immigrant Workers Advocate (KIWA), the Thai Community Development Center, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, the Asian Law Caucus, Asian Immigrant Women Advocates, and Equal Rights Advocates.

2.
Julie A. Su, “El Monte Thai Garment Workers: Slave Sweatshops,”
http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/swatch/campaigns/elmonte.html
.

3.
Julie A. Su, “Making the Invisible Visible: The Garment Industry’s Dirty Laundry,”
The Journal of Gender, Race and Justice,
University of Iowa College of Law, vol. 1, no. 2 (Spring 1998).

4.
Nancy Cleeland, “Garment Makers’ Compliance with Labor Laws Slips in L.A.,”
Los Angeles Times,
Sept. 21, 2000, p. C1. Federal violators in 2000 encompassed 25 percent of clothing firms in San Francisco and 48 percent in New York City. Victoria Colliver, “S.F Clothing Firms Clean Up Their Act,”
Los Angeles Times,
Mar. 29, 2002, p. B1.

1.
“The US-Mexico Border,” Migration Policy Institute, June 2007,
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/displaycfm?ID=407
.

2.
“Causes and Trends in Migrant Deaths Along the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1985–1998,” University of Houston,
http://www.uh.edu/cir/death.htm
.

3.
Farm Subsidy Database, Environmental Working Group,
http://www.ewg.org
.

4.
Margaret Reeves, Kristin Schafer, Kate Hallward, and Anne Katten, “Fields of Poison: California Farmworkers and Pesticides” (San Francisco: Pesticide Action Network North America, United Farm Workers of America, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, 1999). Birth-defect information is from Imperial County, California.

5.
Ibid.

6.
Anthony DePalma,
New York Times,
Oct. 3, 2000, p. C1.

7.
Tim Weiner,
New York Times,
Mar. 3, 2001, p. Ai. At the urging of the Mexican government, networks are being established to cut fees through the use of computer transfers, cash cards, and direct salary deposits by U.S. employers into accounts in Mexico.

8.
New York Times,
Jan. 1, 2002, p. Ci and Mar. 27, 2003, p. A12.

9.
Maria Panarras and Thomas Ginsberg,
Philadelphia Inquirer,
Dec. 12,2002.

1.
Philip Moss and Chris Tilly, “Soft Skills, Race, and Employment: Evidence from Employers,” paper presented at Urban Institute, Washington, D.C., May 6, 999. Interviews with employers in auto parts manufacturing, insurance, and retail found soft skills mentioned as important qualities in entry-level employees 74 to 100 percent of the time, hard skills 22 to 67 percent.

2.
Interview with Parrish Wiggins, job developer at SOME’s Center for Employment Training, Washington, D.C., May 20, 2002.

1.
Judith Lewis Herman,
Trauma and Recovery
(New York: Basic Books, 1992), pp. 96, III.

2.
S.M. Horwitz, L. V. Klerman, H. S. Kuo, andj. F. Jekel,“Intergenerational Transmission of School Age Parenthood,”
Family Planning Perspectives
24 (1991): 168-77.

3.
Kevin Fiscella, M.D., M.P.H.; Harriet J. Kitzman, Ph.D.; Robert E. Cole, Ph.D.; Kimberly J. Sidora; and David Olds, Ph.D., “Does Child Abuse Predict Adolescent Pregnancy?”
Pediatrics
101 (April 1998): 620—24.

4.
Maya Pines, “A Child’s Mind Is Shaped Before Age 2,”
Life,
December 1971.

5.
Barry Zuckerman and Robert Kahn, “Pathways to Early Child Health and Development,” in Sheldon Danziger and Jane Waldfogel, eds.,
Securing the Future: Investing in Children from Birth to College
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000), pp. 92-93.

6.
Pines, “A Child’s Mind.”

7.
“Educational Day Care Can Reduce Risk of Mild Retardation,”
Growing Child Research Review
8, no. 10 (October 1990), from
American Journal of Public Health
80, no. 7, p. 844.

8.
Alexandra Starr, “Does Universal Preschool Pay?”
Business Week,
Apr. 29, 2002, p. 98.

9.
Lisbeth B. Schorr,
Within Our Reach
(New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1988), pp. 163-68.

10.
“Parents As Teachers: A Research-Based Program,”
http://www.patnc.org/researchevaluation.asp

1.
Economic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture,
Food Security in the United States,
2010,
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/stats_graphs.htm#food_secure
.

2.
Jack P. Shonkoff and Deborah A. Phillips, eds.,
From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Child Development
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000), pp. 204-205.

3.
Joycelyn Guyer and Cindy Mann, “Employed but Not Insured: A State-by-State Analysis of the Number of Low-Income Working Parents Who Lack Health Insurance” (Washington, D.C.: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 1999). Cited in Barry Zuckerman and Robert Kahn, “Pathways to Early Child Health and Development,” in Sheldon Danziger and Jane Waldfogel, eds.,
Securing the Future: Investing in Children from Birth to College
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000), p. 96.

4.
Shonkoff and Phillips,
Neurons,
p. 208.

5.
Zuckerman and Kahn, “Pathways,” p. 96, citing Marie C. McCormick, “The Outcomes of Very-Low-Birthweight Infants: Are We Asking the Right Questions?”
Pediatrics
99 no. 6: 869–76.

6.
Shonkoff and Phillips,
Neurons,
pp. 207-209.

7.
Zuckerman and Kahn, “Pathways,” p. 90.

8.
Ibid., p. 92.

9.
Shonkoff and Phillips,
Neurons,
p. 238.

10.
Steven Parker, Steven Greer, and Barry Zuckerman, “Double Jeopardy: The Impact of Poverty on Early Child Development,”
The Pediatric Clinics of North America,
35, no. 6 (December 1988): 1234.

11.
Niomi Richman, Jim Stevenson, and Phillip J. Graham
, Preschool to School: A Behavioral Study
(New York: Academic Press, 1982), cited in Zuckerman and Kahn, “Pathways,” p. 98.

12.
Ibid., pp. 213–14.

13.
Mary Carlson and Felton Earls, “Psychological and Neuroendocrinological Sequelae of Early Social Deprivation in Institutionalized Children in Romania,”
Annals of the New York Academy of Science
807 (1997): 409–428, cited in Zuckerman and Kahn, “Pathways,” p. 91.

14.
Shonkoff and Phillips,
Neurons,
p. 237.

15.
Parker et al., “Double Jeopardy,” p. 1232.

16.
M. Duyme, A.-C. Dumaret, and S. Tomkiewicz, “How Can We Boost IQs of ‘Dull Children’?: A Late Adoption Study,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
96, no. 15: 8790–8794, cited in Shonkoff and Phillips,
Neurons,
pp. 286-87.

17.
David Brown,
Washington Post,
Sept. 19, 2002, p. A3. American Lung Association, “Childhood Asthma Overview,” Oct. 2007,
http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=22782
.

1.
Jonathan Kozol,
Savage Inequalities
(New York: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 20-21.

2.
Ibid., p. 83.

1.
Barbara Ehrenreich,
Nickel and Dimed
(New York: Holt, 2001), p. 149.

1.
“Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2000,” U.S. Census Bureau,
Current Population Reports,
February 2002, Table B, pp. 6–7.

2.
Los Angeles Times,
Apr. 7, 2003, p. A20 and
New York Times,
Apr. 23, 2008, p. Ai. Of the total inmate population, which reached 2.3 million in 2006, nearly 143,000 were non-citizens and over 90,000 were minors.

3.
David Brooks, “The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest,”
New York Times,
Jan. 12, 2003, Section 4, p. 15.

4.
Liana Fox, “What a New Federal Minimum Wage Means for the States,” Economic Policy Inst., June 1, 2007.

5.
The ACORN Living Wage Resource Center,
http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/shortwins.php
.

6.
Robert Pear, “Aid to Poor Faces Tighter Scrutiny,”
New York Times,
Feb. 5, 2003, p. Ai.

7.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jan. 25, 2008,
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nro.htm
.