Tag Archives: social policy

Quality of Life, and Building it for my Kids

Posted on May 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment

**I’m still catching up on posts about all of the reading that I did between Thanksgiving and the beginning of February–my most prolific reading period of the entire year, for sure–and slowly going through the pile of sticky notes that I accumulated as I processed what I read, and what it made me think.**

This week, I have three posts related to the really excellent book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. You should totally read the book, which is full of data that turns what we think we know about poverty, and wealth, and well-being, on its head.

But, as usual, this isn’t so much a traditional ‘review’ as it is my reflections on what a particular concept means for me, and, I hope, for us.

Every parent wants a good quality of life for her/his children, right? I mean, I know not just for my neighbors–here in this pretty affluent suburb–but also for the immigrant parents with whom I have the honor to work, it’s the hope that the future holds something promising, and secure, and healthy for one’s children that motivates much of what we do.

But thinking about what the evidence says about real quality of life, and about how to get it, must provoke a reconsideration of our pursuits. Because, increasingly, we know that having more doesn’t mean having it better.

In the United States, especially for those not in the lowest income tiers, we’re reading the limit of what increasing living standards can offer us, in terms of health and life expectancy and all-around wellness.

In fact, we know that, inequality matters a lot in determining how healthy people are, how much they learn, even how happy they feel, even controlling for income.

It matters even more than we want to admit, because acknowledging how important equality is in shaping our own well-being means that we have to spend more collective energy (and public resources) figuring out wealth distribution instead of trying to get as much as we can for ourselves, or even just adding to the total aggregate.

Mental illness rates are higher in societies with more inequality, with even health among higher-income populations affected by overall levels of inequality.

It’s not enough to have ‘enough’ for yourself.

You’re harmed, in some real, tangible ways, as well as some more subtle psychological ones, by the existence of others who have far less than enough.

And less than you.

We know that from data, but we know it from our lived and practice experience too, right?

I see the anxiety around me, from parents who put their 5-year-olds in tons of activities because they want to produce ‘well-rounded scholars’ (yes, they use that phrase) to neighbors who reluctantly acknowledge that they’re in deep debt because of out-of-control spending to couples whose marriages fall apart because of the strain of overwork. I see a harsh side of inequality in the smugness of those who accept mediocrity from our public school system, secure in the knowledge that it’s still better than what other kids get.

It’s not ‘cultural’, this stress and malaise and vindictiveness.

It’s born of the proximity of desperation, and the knowledge that we are but a few ‘failures’ away from the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, which seem like such a long way down. It’s exposed by the tattered safety net and the panicking realization that there’s very little to catch us if, or when, we fall.

It’s a special kind of insecurity that can only be mitigated by building a society where everyone has enough, because we can never hoard enough for ourselves to feel safe.

And that gets me to thinking about our kids, and to facing the awareness that I cannot protect them, as long as I’m only trying to protect them.

Because I want BETTER for my kids, not better like iPads for my 3-year-olds but better like believing that people take care of each other when it’s needed, that belonging to a society comes with certain guarantees, and that no one should have too much…or too little.

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There’s always a bright spot

Posted on April 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

My favorite story from Switch is about the mothers in Vietnam, and how an anti-hunger campaign there, rather than beginning with an exhaustive study about all of the factors that perpetuate the problem of child malnutrition, instead started with a search for where things were going well.

And then set out to replicate those bright spots.

Over and over and over again.

This idea aligns with how I teach social policy from the strengths perspective, taking the stance that policy approaches that build from the good things that are happening, even in the midst of social problems, will be ultimately much more successful.

It’s how I parent, too, consciously trying to spend way more time talking with my kids about what they’re doing well than about what needs to change. Because it’s really true, at least with my 3-year-old twins, that focusing on the problems mainly get you more problems.

Strengths-based social workers spend a lot of our time defending ourselves. Because, no, focusing on strengths does not mean that we ignore the problems. Or that we’re all Pollyannas. Or that we pretend that things will take care of themselves. Strengths-based social policy isn’t unrealistic.

To the contrary: it’s what works.

Because it begins from what’s working.

There are a variety of reasons why focusing on these bright spots–again, even in the context of real challenge (think: child starvation)–works, all of which will be familiar to strengths-based direct practitioners, too:

  • Beginning with a nod to what’s already going well is like starting halfway there, and that breeds hope which, in turn, gives us momentum for greater changes
  • Sometimes we can’t fully understand a problem, but we can zero in on the places where, even inexplicably, things are going well, to try to mirror that
  • In the policy context, we can bring more people to our cause by rallying them around a possibility than guilting them into caring about our disasters
  • Strengths-based policy development builds on a different process, not just a unique product; if we’re going to solve this problem by following the leads of those who have already partially solved it, then we are by default going to involve those folks more actively in the solution, rather than give them a list of directions to follow. It’s no surprise which works better (another way in which parenting is like social change!).

    All of this has me thinking about bright spots, an exercise which, I’ll admit, is a bit foreign to me, as someone who is uncomfortably attuned to the injustices and inhumanities that populate our world.

    But there are some, and I think that we’re already learning from them. What about the teenager who makes it out of a poverty-ridden neighborhood, later to credit the mentor or one caring adult who shepherded her? Why can’t we build systems that provide those shepherds for everyone? What about the welfare office that locates in a school, and sees intake rates skyrocket as barriers are erased? Why can’t we take down hurdles everywhere? What about the backpack programs that send nutritious food home with kids from school and significantly reduce food insecurity? Why can’t we make sure that every hungry child has one?

    Looking for bright spots, to me, is more than just a reflection of an ideological preference for positivity.

    It’s about turning technical problems into political ones.

    Finding what works allows us to stop pretending that we don’t know how to solve the problems that face us–or at least how to begin to solve them–and requires that we focus, instead, on overcoming our resistance to solving them.

    Which means that we need to look for other bright spots, then: the places where movements of people have, as only movements of people can, summoned the political will to light bright spots all over the place.

    To light.

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Shrink your bucket: maybe ours aren’t ‘people problems’

Posted on April 9, 2012 by | 3 Comments

Tomorrow’s post is about how, in the realm of advocacy and social action, we can’t rely on the same environmental changes that marketers and athletic trainers and others use to motivate people to take action more easily. Because, after all, if advocacy is so easy, doesn’t it lose some of its impact?

But that’s enough of a spoiler.

Because I’m still thinking through this whole “how much do we focus on motivating the individual to change, versus change the context in which the change needs to occur” question. And I’m thinking that, in social policy, there’s a pretty good argument to be made for bucket-shrinking, and that social workers would be well-served to shift some of our advocacy efforts towards those policy solutions that focus on the size of the bucket, and not the decisions people make in response.

See, there’s this popcorn bucket study in Switch that is pretty compelling–essentially, researchers found that they could make people eat more, or less, popcorn just by changing the size of the bucket.

Just the bucket. That’s all that was different.

There are all kinds of applications for this bucket shrinking in the social policy world, some of which are among our greatest policy successes. What if we made cars safer, so that even really bad driving isn’t as likely to kill anyone? What if we made food safer, so that fewer people contracted foodborne illnesses? What if we built highways everywhere and defunded public transportation, so that people learned to think that they need to drive themselves everywhere? (OK, I know, but that last one WAS successful, if that had been our goal!)

What if we applied this bucket-shrinking approach to the social policy realm?

What if Election Day was a holiday, so people would be more likely to vote (especially if they didn’t have to register in advance)? What if we gave everyone time off work to participate in their kids’ schools, instead of complaining that “parents aren’t involved”? What if we co-located services, so that it is easier for parents to, say, stay up on their kids’ immunizations and get their own cholesterol checked? What if insurance paid for mental health check-ups every year, just like physicals? What if credit cards weren’t so easy to use, and debt not so hard to avoid? What if every child in poverty knew that college was paid for?

What if, instead of just telling people over and over again, with exhortations and graphic warnings and shiny social marketing, that they should really, really eat less popcorn…we just made the buckets smaller?

Where, in the social policy issues you care about, is there a need for a different bucket size? How would changing the incentives, and the costs, make a difference? What are the limits of these contextual modifications, and what kinds of policy approaches would test those? How do social workers ensure that individuals’ right to self-determination is protected, without confusing true self-determination with the unnecessary divorce of context and behavior? Why do we focus so much on the individual, scratching our heads and wondering “what is WRONG with ‘these people’, that they eat SO MUCH popcorn”…instead of just making the buckets smaller?

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Grown-ups need villages, too

Posted on February 27, 2012 by | 2 Comments

"Happy Villages" quilt

By far, my absolute favorite part of teaching is when my students come up with insights that make me think about social work, or social justice, in a different way. In those moments, it goes beyond the “I’m learning just as much as you are” (which always sounds a little false to me, honestly, even though I certainly do learn every semester) to produce these real “lightbulbs” of understanding, for which I am always truly grateful.

One of those moments happened in a discussion board interaction with a student in my community and organizational theory class. She was reacting to a post about the social work profession as somewhat uniquely, among the helping profession, focused on the person-in-environment, and relating this to the axiom that “it takes a village to raise a child.” She made the point that it is truly a bit bizarre that we can see (although we certainly don’t always live it out in policy!) how children are affected by their environments, and how crafting healthy institutions that surround kids with supports is an essential element in raising strong youth, but yet, somehow, when these young people grow up, we reflexively attribute their challenges to personal failings, and look for their internal pathologies, as though, well, grown-ups don’t need villages too.

I’ve certainly been thinking a lot about the supports on which I depend to raise my children these past few months: the grandparents whose presence in their lives is constant and nurturing, the neighbors whose friendship and presence sustain us during our days, the public spaces that provide us with a greater quality of life, the schools that are shaping their minds.

But my student’s post prompted my thinking about how our need for these kinds of supports–both formal and informal–certainly don’t end when we magically become adults, or restart only when we ourselves become parents. In truth, our entire lives are bracketed by a mutual interdependence on the environments in which we either thrive or struggle to survive. And social workers (and policymakers) misunderstand this at our collective peril.

Certainly, children’s futures are shaped by the context in which they grow up. And I think there’s a growing acceptance of that idea.

But adults’ todays and tomorrows are just as influenced by these environmental factors, and not just in a carryover sense from their own childhoods, but in a very real way as “grown-ups”: the availability of jobs, their access to health care and transportation, resources for mental health care, supportive social networks, physically strong community infrastructure.

We obviously have a long way to go in order to build “villages” that will surround our children with the opportunities they need to succeed…and the nets they need to catch them when they fall. And adults will carry the legacies of these disparities and inadequacies until we can get that right.

But then, as my student to wisely realizes, we need to apply that same understanding of shared responsibility and linked fates to how we work with other populations.

Including the grown-ups we hope those kids will become.

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A Diary of a Social Worker in the Political Arena

Posted on October 17, 2011 by | 4 Comments

**Note from Melinda: I asked Becky Fast, whom I have known since my undergraduate days (when she was my boss!) to write a reflection about her decades as a professional social worker immersed in the political realm, always with a laser focus on upholding the mission of our profession and advancing our collective values. I am honored that she agreed to do so and thrilled to share this inspiring post with you. Becky has graciously agreed to share her email address, too, for those interested in pursuing this path–I can say from personal experience that she is an excellent mentor! blfast at msn.com

My venture into politics began advocating for the rights of my brother with Downs Syndrome to access regular education. At a young age, I observed first-hand how public laws and regulations excluded full participation of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities.

I was attracted to the profession of social work because of my desire to be a social activist. I had a desire to change the world in such a way that others wouldn’t have the childhood experiences that I had. I was attracted to the mission of the profession to uplift people and to improve the quality of their lives.

Social work when practiced at its best is about social change and social justice. Yet – I was greeted with mixed reactions from my social work colleagues when I decided to detour for 12 years from direct practice to a career in political social work as an aide to a U.S. Congressman. I found it perplexing to encounter a long-standing and pervasive belief that social workers are to be apolitical in their approach to professional practice. I found social workers embracing public service, volunteerism, and community organizing but they were conflicted about direct involvement in politics.

The Institute for the Advancement of Political Social Work Practice at the University of Connecticut-School of Social Work under the leadership of Dr. Nancy A. Humphreys helped me to see that I wasn’t abandoning my profession by working as a political social worker. I began to see that everything I learned through my MSW education and field practice experience is what exactly a politician needs to be successful. Over the years, I found my professional knowledge critical to candidates for office and elected officials as they formulate social policy decisions.

In my role as the Director of Casework for a U.S. Congressman, I handled individual and community problems with federal policies and programs including Medicare, Social Security and Veterans Benefits. When individuals or groups would have similar problems, it was my responsibility to report to the Congressman and assess if a change in federal legislation was needed.

Our daily lives as social workers are often based on actions taken in the political arena. My current job as a hospice social worker is dependent in a large part upon helping families access the Medicare hospice benefit. Our nation’s support for housing, health care, childcare, and education for the disadvantage and vulnerable are all made by politicians and government officials. As programs and services are slashed and cut from the statehouse to the white house, social workers involved in politics are needed now more than ever as our clients lose their jobs, housing, and health insurance from financial insecurity. Many of our clients with the least amount of resources carry the heaviest social and economic burdens.

Politicians change policy that either will help or hurt our profession and our clients. Social workers working on the “inside” as elected officials, lobbyists, campaign workers, staff and as a part of coalitions are needed to insure political empowerment of the populations we serve.

Empowering ourselves and our clients by becoming more active in political processes is a core tenet of social work and what political social work practice is all about. More politically empowered social service professionals and clients will improve the public policy decision-making and the services provided.

Being involved in politics doesn’t have to be a career it can also be as simple as writing an email or making a phone call to an elected official about a proposed budget cut. If you are considering getting involved in political advocacy please join me because only together can we effectively fight against poverty, racism, and injustice.

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Solving my babysitting problems while promoting intergenerational policy convergence

Posted on February 3, 2011 by | 2 Comments

March 16, 2010 Rally for Public Schools, Topeka, KS--my parents, kids, and I are standing just out of view to your left

I won’t try to pretend that my main motivation for having my kids’ grandparents babysit them so much is to spur increased commitment on the part of each (kids and grandparents) to the kinds of intergenerationally equitable policy solutions that are so often elusive, or at least presented as such, particularly in the areas of entitlement reform, taxation, and budget cuts.

But I really think it’s a side benefit.

Okay, so my kids are too young to voice their support for productive aging strategies, universal design, and a robust income support policy for older adults. The younger two are still working on talking, and the older one is currently obsessed with Captain Underpants, so we’ll give them a little time.

But my parents get it, I think more than many retired people, and they pay more attention, which is perhaps just as important. And, granted, some of that could be because they’re my parents, and they’re wonderful, and they have to listen to me going on and on about this and that policy debate all the time.

But I think there’s good evidence, anecdotally at least, that their frequent, sustained, and meaningful contact with my kids changes their perspective on policies that affect children and young adults, in ways that have potentially powerful implications for building public support for the kind of policy infrastructure that all generations need and deserve.

  • When they pick my son up at preschool, they see what well-paid early childhood educators working in a clean and spacious environment can do with little kids, and they recognize the importance of every child having access to such a resource.
  • When they take my sick daughter to the doctor, they are reminded of the importance of each child having a medical ‘home’ and the insurance coverage to pay for it.
  • When they see the twins’ faces light up at the public park, they think about the erosion of quality public spaces and the need to preserve areas where children can play safely.
  • When they hear my older son’s friend talk about how he was supposed to go to all-day kindergarten but can’t because his parents can’t afford it, they realize that many programs within our “public” schools aren’t free, and that young families face real challenges in providing for their children’s educations.
  • When they hear my voice on the phone, trying to sound calm as I tell them that the other babysitter cancelled and I’m supposed to give a speech in an hour, but it will take me 40 minutes to get there, they remember (as they grab their keys) that childcare arrangements are precarious for so many families, and that parents can’t work unless someone is providing good, quality, affordable care for their children.

    I would never discount the very real struggles of grandparents raising grandchildren–I, too, am reminded of the importance of supports for older adults when I see my parents’ relief when I pull up to take over the childcare once again–nor do I naively assume that seeing need in the eyes of one’s own grandchildren automatically translates into commitment to meet the needs of children everywhere.

    But I see how my Dad learns so much about our community, and the realities of young families, while he’s watching the kids play at the sandbox and talking to (as he calls them) “the other moms”. I see how my Mom reads the whole newsletter that my son brings home from school, and often asks me questions about it. I see how their lives become integrated with those of other generations as they learn to inhabit the same spaces, and share the same resources, and I think…maybe I’m onto something after all.

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    I’m a “values” voter

    Posted on October 28, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    Values: emotion-laden beliefs about how things should or should not be

    Um, yeah, I’ve got a lot of those.

    I believe very strongly in a vision of how the world should be: a more just distribution of resources, opportunities for all children to be safe and to learn, supports for families of all configurations, core human and civil rights for all persons, a healthy environment for this generation and those to come.

    I have definite emotions wrapped up in those values, and strong emotional responses–anger, sadness, elation, hope, fear, disappointment–associated with our movement towards or away from that vision.

    And I have policy preferences that stem from those values, as an expression of those values and the strategies I see as most promising for bringing them to fruition.

    And my desire to see those policies enacted drives my voting behavior, my political contributions, my willingness to volunteer for candidates, and, yes, my interpretation of “objective facts.”

    Even though I’m a sometimes social scientist, then, I make no effort to pretend to divorce my values from my perceptions of reality. I know that they are a lens through which I see the world. I know that there are words, and images, that are, for me, powerful activators of my political motivations, and that I’m instinctively biased against a candidate who talks about the “death tax” or “the gay lifestyle”.

    Objectivity is overrated.

    Really.

    And it’s really unattainable anyway.

    So, this election, I’m claiming my identity as a “values voter”, someone who makes every decision about for whom I’m going to vote (or for what) based on the values that I hold most dear, and only secondly on my logic-based assessment of how well a given policy or candidate will advance those values.

    What about you? What values will motivate your vote (and your decision to vote) next Tuesday? How do your values influence how you see the “facts”? And how will you communicate these values to candidates and organizations seeking your support?

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    Of silver linings–the policy ‘good’ that may come from all the recession ‘bad’

    Posted on September 16, 2010 by | 1 Comment

    Because I don’t in any way wish to give the impression that I’m celebrating the pain that the current recession is bringing to individuals, organizations, and entire communities in the United States and around the world, maybe the title for this post should instead be, “Things I’m Really Glad We’re Not Talking So Much About Anymore.”

    But I really do believe that there may be some long-term good, in terms of the shifting of policy priorities in the country, to come from this widespread, deeply-felt, and sustained period of economic downturn. That’s one of the lessons that we should take from the social reforms achieved in the last, still worst, economic depression this country has seen.

    The whole “personal responsibility crusade”, while certainly a seed of inspiration for the Tea Party folks and some other anti-Obama campaigners, has fallen quite dramatically from favor. We don’t have to read one news story after another about various proposals for Social Security privatization. No one’s credibly talking about replacing Medicare with health savings accounts. Being unemployed is no longer assumed to be code for being uneducated, unmotivated, or criminal.

    There is an understanding, not insignificantly, that bad economic things happen to really “good people”, and, even more importantly, that government should play a role in cushioning the blow when people fall victim to these economic forces and, even, (!) seek to prevent some of the falls in the first place.

    Sound familiar?

    So, in addition to health care reform that addresses many (but not all) of the concerns Hacker outlines in the chapter on “Risky Health Care”, we have student loan reform that makes college more affordable (and loan repayment more feasible), and a push for financial reforms that would curb some of the banking practices that heightened the risks Americans face.

    Those are obviously big things, and we can and must work very hard over the next few years to achieve more legislated “bricks” in a secure economic foundation.

    But I’m perhaps even more hopeful about some of the changes in attitudes about the appropriate relationship between a government and its people–more questions asked about how 401(k)s are supposed to provide retirement security when so many have lost so much in their accounts, more student protests against tuition increases in higher education, more recognition that health care should be a basic right rather than a chance happening.

    And, while I certainly wish that we could undo the economic damage we’ve sustained in these past 3 years, I celebrate the beginning of the reversal in the inward-looking, self-blaming, isolating exaltation of personal responsibility, and believe that this is our best chance in quite awhile to dispel the idea that we deserve to shoulder all of the risks and yet receive few of the spoils associated with economic life in 21st century America.

    But those clouds are lifting, so we must find ways to harness this shared sense of vague insecurity and turn it into a strong movement for social change, if we are to weave a safety net that will actually catch us the next time we fall. Because this surely won’t be the last recession, but it can be the last one that Americans have to weather alone.

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    When is a social problem not a “problem”?

    Posted on September 13, 2010 by | 2 Comments

    I spend more time than most people, probably, thinking about what makes us define certain conditions as social problems, or not, and about the impact of that problem definition on the development of a policy agenda that, ultimately, we hope will lead to significant change in those same social problems.

    So it was with considerable chagrin and great interest that I read The Great Risk Shift, which is basically a couple hundred pages of compelling personal stories, strong economic trend data, and fairly detailed legislative and ideological analysis that, collectively, puts a name to a social problem that is undeniably such, but which I’ve never really spent much time contemplating:

    Economic Insecurity

    Distinct, then, from economic inequality, which I actually use as an example of when problematic conditions are not broadly accepted as social problems, but which Jacob Hacker argues is actually far more debated than the more insidious nature of economic insecurity (and he has a good point–we do talk about rising executive pay, at least a little, but who really contests the replacement of pensions with defined-contribution plans anymore?). Distinct, too, from poverty, which, despite being a seemingly intractable part of our economic structure (and on the rise, as the 2010 Census data will no doubt show), is universally recognized as a bad thing that deserves our attention (although that’s about where the agreement ends).

    Economic insecurity, on the other hand, has become such a part of what we accept about economic life in the United States that, while we may recognize and even bemoan its effects–longer work weeks to compensate for stagnant wages; an increase in work activity among retirement-aged older adults; middle-class Americans saddled with their own student loan debt into middle age, and unable to save for their children’s education; workers who stay in dead-end jobs because they’re afraid to lose their health insurance; the rise in bankruptcies associated with health care costs; the tragic incidence of home foreclosures related to risky subprime loans–we still seldom pinpoint the cause at the foundation: a conscious decision on the part of policymakers and corporate leaders to shift the risks inherent with life and, especially, productive activity, onto ordinary families.

    Social workers talk about the broken social contract, about how Aid to Families with Dependent Children has become a block grant and the safety net is really more like a tattered scarf that, if you’re lucky, you might use to keep a little warm in a storm…and, I think, that this idea of economic insecurity, the idea that no matter of work effort or personal initiative or all-around ‘goodness’ can really protect us against devastating loss, is part of what we’re railing against. After all, the welfare reform bill was called the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reform Act”, and Hacker calls this whole dismantling of the social insurance system part of the “personal responsibility crusade”.

    But, when it comes to our own lives, this social problem has become so much a part of the fabric of “the way things work” that we lack some of the language, let alone the organizing strategy, with which to name and attack it. The personal responsibility movement has, at its heart, a message that “we’re all in this alone”, and that’s part of its danger–that same message pushes people to turn inward in the face of economic threats, and, when we’re looking to ourselves to find the fault, we’re less likely to get mad and join with our neighbor to make things right.

    The health care debate over the past two years has brought some of these issues into focus, and the recession certainly provides an opportunity to organize around almost-universal experiences of uncertainty and doubt, if not outright panic and deprivation, but we have to start from a common understanding of what the problem is, how we got here, and how fundamentally our own lives and the workings of our economy will need to change in order to make economic security a strong foundation for the economic opportunity about which our country claims to be concerned.

    Some of the pages that I marked as I read, that I think could be part of our journey to identify the problem of economic insecurity, mobilize the vast majority of Americans who know its consequences intimately, and bring about the change that we know only concerted action can:

  • I show a chart in my Advanced Policy class about wage stagnation over the past 3 decades, and we talk about the social and economic changes (increase in women’s labor participation, increased work effort, etc…) that has wrought in U.S. families. Hacker illustrates wage volatility, which spikes in economic downturns but is alarmingly high as a baseline, and discusses the economic and emotional effects of such dramatic dips and fluctuations in pay from year to year.
  • I also spend some time comparing the U.S. welfare state to that of other developed economies (and we’re always on the low end of investments and outcomes), but Hacker points out that, including private expenditures and tax incentives, the U.S. spends a lot on health care, retirement, and disability insurance. The problem is that, increasingly, these are not secure guarantees of any kinds but a hodgepodge of mostly employer-based benefits that lack portability, universality, adequacy, and stability.
  • Precisely because economic insecurity is a problem that cuts across economic classes, we have to address classism in our society in order to fight it. Hacker doesn’t talk about this; I’m not sure why, but it jumped out at me at several points. College-educated professionals have actually seen greater wage volatility over the past two decades than those workers with less education, and many of the foreclosures and bankruptcies associated with this recession have happened in households that were previously middle-class or even upper-income earners. But, of course, classism rages in the U.S., and so many of these well-educated, previously “successful” individuals are loathe to acknowledge that their performance in the “self-reliant” category has been less than stellar, and that, indeed, they are vulnerable and victimized by many of the same economic forces that afflict those less well-positioned. Everyone likes to look to those below and say, “at least I’m not….” and, as long as we’re dividing ourselves like that, we’ll blame ourselves or those lesser others, rather than the real culprits, for the strains we experience separately, yet together. This would, of course, affect anti-poverty policy, too, since the reality is that ALMOST 60% of Americans will spend at least a year in poverty between 20-75, even controlling for those cash-poor college years. Imagine if we had an anti-poverty policy based on that picture of who’s poor (most of us!).
  • It’s economic insecurity, even more than actual income level, that’s associated most strongly with psychological distress. We social workers know that we spend a lot of time dealing with the fallout from the way that policies harm our clients. These new insights help us to better understand precisely what’s inflicting these wounds–the stress of not knowing what tomorrow will bring to our finances is, quite literally, making us sick.
  • We’re NOT doing this to ourselves. Myself, I know that I’ve been guilty of that whole “policy analysis by anecdote”, shaking my head at a friend’s purchase of a house she really can’t afford or a relative’s purchase of television so huge it scares (really) my children. My husband and I don’t buy very much, not as much because of a grand plan to provide for our economic security as because we don’t want really want very much, and so it’s easy to look at others’ decisions and raise our eyebrows. But Hacker cites data from Elizabeth Warren that illustrates pretty definitively that the income gains of the past few decades have been eaten up by the rising cost of basic household expenses–housing, health care, transportation, taxes, education, and childcare–not by our expanded expectations.

    And perhaps it’s that last point that can serve as the starting point for implementing Hacker’s three-point plan of “get wise, get mad, get even”. We do need to know what we can do to protect ourselves in the current “fend for oneself” environment–the whole “secure your oxygen mask before helping others” idea. But we can’t stop there. If we’re not responsible for this mess (as I often tell my kids!), we shouldn’t have to clean it all up. We need to agitate and organize, and build the kinds of policy structures that will bring an equitable and adequate measure of economic security to all Americans.

    In other words, let’s call it a problem and then solve it.

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    Economic Insecurity, as seen from the sandbox

    Posted on September 13, 2010 by | 1 Comment

    photo credit, manyeyes, via flickr

    So I’ve obviously been thinking a lot lately about economic insecurity.

    And I spend a lot of time at the park with my kids, so I’ve noticed many signs of the impact of this insecurity on young families, like mine.

    And that’s got me thinking about kids and working parents and economic policy and what it would take to build a structure of economic security, and what that would look like from my perch on the edge of the sandbox, listening to kids shout “Mommy, watch me!” in English, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish.

    I see more fathers at the park these days, and they’re not there spending a day off with their kids–they’re unemployed, or working only part-time, or handing out business cards to other parents, trying to get customers for a remodeling business or website design or software consulting. And I wonder what’s happening to their savings accounts, and to their mental health.

    I hear moms talking about sales and coupons and how to save money, a lot more than I used to. And many “stay-at-home” moms really aren’t, totally. Many families, like my own, are balancing shifts of sorts, with both parents earning and both caring for children, in order to reduce costs and increase income. One mom brings the jewelry that she makes to the park to sell. I get at least 3 invitations a month to some ‘party’ where a mom is trying to earn extra income by selling stamps or housewares or clothing.

    And then there’s the strain. Certainly some of the parents that I see and hear snapping at their children or staring absently into space are comparatively economically secure, but I wonder, especially now, how much of the stress that manifests itself in difficult interactions between parents and kids stems from the underlying pressures of trying to raise those children–the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates raising a single child to age 18 will cost a middle-income family almost $237,000, or 37% of income per year, in addition to reducing income as one caregiver reduces hours or changes schedules to meet childcare demands.

    As Hacker concludes his chapter on “Risky Families”, “when Americans build strong families, it has profound benefits for society as a whole: stronger neighborhoods, more productive workers…(the costs) are paid for through the sacrifices that families must make, the risks that families must bear, usually without much compensation or assistance” (108).

    And that’s what I see most, from my spot under the tree, watching my daughter stuff sand in her pants and my sons race the dump trucks–families trying their best, to do the hard work of parenting so that their kids will grow up happy and healthy and a credit to their families and an asset to the world.

    And, as any parent knows, there’s a lot of insecurity in the business of raising kids even under the best circumstances: will my son make it through quiet rest at school? Will my daughter’s language development pick up? Will my kids survive high school with the embarrassment of their mom’s letters to the editor appearing in the paper every month? (all of these are, um, obviously just hypothetical)

    We can’t legislate all of those potentialities away–that’s part of what we sign on for when we become, through whatever path, “parents”. But we can, and should, and must, do something about the other. Because working parents should be able to plan for the future, with some guarantee against devastating income plunges. And every family should have health care. And disabilities shouldn’t bankrupt. And, after working hard at both “jobs”–paid work and unpaid parenting–for decades, everyone deserves to retire.

    With that kind of foundation, imagine the sand castles we could build to the sky.

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