Poverty Jump and "Shredding the Safety Net" -- Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA)

Poverty Jump and "Shredding the Safety Net" -- Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA)
GWENDOLYN MINK
Mink is co-editor of the two-volume Poverty in the United States: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics and Policy and author of Welfare's End. She said today: "The rise in poverty in 2009 -- the largest number of people in poverty in the 51 years poverty has been measured -- should be a wake-up call to politicians in both parties who have spent the past 30 years shredding the safety net. The spread of poverty in the past year is only partially explained by the economic collapse of 2008 and the prolonged, acute problem of unemployment that followed and continues. Since 1980, income supports for low-income people have been withdrawn, eroded, and withheld. Notwithstanding the current recession -- deep and intractable as it is -- economic support for poor Americans has remained meager, stingy, and inaccessible.