Fitzsimon File

The headlines about Tuesday’s release of the latest poverty and health care data from the U.S. Census Bureau told conflicting stories. Some papers and websites proclaimed that “N.C. income has increased.” One national publication ran a headline saying that President Bush was buoyed by the Census report.

It is true that median household income in the nation and in North Carolina increased from 2005 to 2006 and that the overall poverty rate declined slightly. That is certainly reasonably good news, but many of the stories left out the context for those figures.

Robert Greenstein with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out that even with the small improvements, the poverty rate is higher and the median income is lower now than in 2001, the last year of the most recent recession.  Greenstein finds it unusual that in the fifth year of an economic recovery median incomes and poverty are still below recessionary levels.

And not all the Census numbers reflected positive increases. The percentage of people without health insurance increased nationally and in North Carolina, where 16.6 percent of the population was uninsured in 2006. That’s 1.4 million people, up from one million in 2000.

The release of North Carolina figures from the N.C. Budget and Tax Center came with a headline that seems to fit the message in the numbers, “Little reason to celebrate.”  That is especially true when you consider that 19.6 percent of North Carolina’s children live in poverty and that hasn’t changed since 2001, despite much-heralded economic growth and a booming stock market.

North Carolina poverty and health care figures varied widely by county, a grim reminder that we are a long way from Governor Mike Easley’s vision of One North Carolina. The new Census numbers come at the same time as reminders of how well some of the state is doing.

Forbes.com has rated North Carolina the third best state in the country for business. That ought to end the discussion about cutting corporate tax rates. And the state is 5^th in the country as a destination for retirees, which certainly runs counter to the claims that taxes are too high on individuals and that retirees are leaving the state in droves, as one former CEO likes to say.

Taken together, all the news paints a pretty clear picture of how North Carolina is doing and who’s struggling and who’s not. It ought to guide policymakers in the next few years and force them to focus far more attention on helping families lift themselves out of poverty.

The recently enacted Earned Income Tax Credit will help some, as will the high-risk insurance pool, expanded children’s health care coverage, and mental health parity legislation.

But one in five children living in poverty is a crisis. And it’s at least as grave as the problems with the state’s transportation system that are receiving so much attention these days. Many of the ways to help poor families are already in place, they are simply under funded.

Roughly two million people in the state living a housing crisis, yet lawmakers continue to provide modest increases to the North Carolina Housing Trust Fund that needs at least $50 million a year to make significant progress in helping families find affordable housing.  There is a broad bipartisan consensus that the Trust Fund works well, but it can’t do much without enough public investment.

Lawmakers this year found the money to remove 643 children from the waiting list for a child care subsidy, but thousands of children still wait, and their mothers are still unable to go back to school or take a low-wage job to gain experience to begin the climb out of the ranks of the poor.

The mental health system remains a mess, leaving many families with nowhere to turn for help caring for a loved one. A new report released Wednesday finds that the state’s sputtering efforts to reform the mental health system have made it harder for many patients to get the help they need.

The General Assembly tinkered around the edges of the poverty crisis this session but they also spent $90 million cutting taxes on the wealthiest 60,000 people in the state. The new Census Data ought to put an end to that kind of behavior.

The Budget and Tax Center is right. There is little reason to celebrate. There is every reason to work much harder to help children and families in North Carolina.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.