Ending Hunger in America, 2014 Hunger Report Full Report | Page 46

Richard Lord

In 2013, more than four
years into recovery
from the Great
Recession, long-term
unemployment (six
months or more)
remained at record
high levels.

It may sound simple, but it’s still true: the best defense against poverty and hunger is a
steady, well-paying job. It is true not only at the household level, but for the nation as a whole.
When jobs are plentiful, poverty and hunger rates plunge.
The late 1990s was a period of exceptionally low unemployment. Low-wage workers, whose
unemployment rate is highest in good times and in bad, saw their best job prospects in decades.
Between 1996 and 2000, the annual poverty rate fell to its lowest level in decades, and just 2
percent of the U.S. population lived
in poverty for this entire period.1
Poverty is a complex problem
that is measured very simply—by
household income. Consider a
family with one wage earner. Every
member of this family is more vulnerable to poverty and hunger than
people in households with more
than one worker. Poverty rates are
highest in families headed by single
mothers, mainly because women
earn just 77 cents for every dollar
earned by men.2 Women make up
85 percent of households headed
by a single parent. In 2011, 40.9 percent of families headed by a single
mother were living in poverty.3 In
families where a single mother
worked full-time, year-round, the poverty rate fell to 13.4 percent.4 While it’s not great news
that 13.4 percent of these full-time, year-round workers and their children were living in poverty, it’s a much lower rate than 40.9 percent and illustrates the importance of a stable job.
Jeannette Wicks-Lim and Jeffrey Thompson, economists based at the University of Massachusetts, analyzed employment patterns in low-income families using U.S. Census data
from 2005 to 2007. They define low-income as up to 200 percent of the poverty threshold,
because their research and that of others shows that families with incomes as high as 200
percent of the poverty level—$48,000 per year for a family of four—struggle to afford basic
necessities such as food and shelter.5 The period covered in the study predates the worst
stretch of the Great Recession. From 2005 to 2007, the unemployment rate averaged less than
5 percent. They write, “The average household head of a low-income working family worked
about 1,420 hours annually from 2005-07—significantly less than full-time, year-round (2,080
The chance of being called
for a job interview falls by

PERCENT

45 percent

as unemployment lengthens
from one to eight months.1
MONTHS

36? Chapter 1

n

Bread for the World Institute

Workers who lost a job from
2007–2009, but who found new
full-time work, faced an average
wage cut of 10.5 percent.2