Illinois poverty at dangerous level
Report ranks state low
POVERTY | Alan Kozeluh
Sangamon County is one of 42 Illinois counties put on a poverty watch list in a report released by the Social Impact Research Center Jan. 29.
The center, part of the Chicago-based anti-poverty group Heartland Alliance, has been publishing reports on poverty in Illinois since 2001. This year’s edition, “Poor by Comparison,” looks at Illinois poverty as compared to other states on 27 different measures.
Jennifer Clary, senior research associate with the Social Impact Research Center, said the federal measure of poverty is oversimplified because it doesn’t take into account characteristics of individual states. Clary says examining a state’s cost of living, access to health care and other factors paint a clearer picture of poverty for that state.
Since the center started putting out the report, Illinois’ poverty rate has been getting progressively worse. In the past few years, about 15 percent of Illinoisans have been living in poverty, a rate not seen since the 1960s.
Illinois did not rank among the best 10 states in any of the study’s categories. Amy Terpstra, director of the Social impact Research Center, said that considering Illinois’ size, economy and education infrastructure, this shouldn’t be the case.
“By many accounts, Illinois should be a national leader on addressing poverty,” said Terpstra. “But when it comes to the wellbeing of its people, particularly those at the bottom of the economic spectrum, Illinois is not stepping up to be the leader it should be.”
The report rated Illinois on factors like employment, health care, hunger, education, housing and savings – or, more specifically, debt.
The highest rating Illinois got was for its minimum wage, which at $8.25 is higher than any of its neighbors. But on average in Illinois, a worker would have to earn $17.34 per hour working 40 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom apartment. Sangamon County is more affordable at $14.29 per hour.
Unfortunately, that seems to be one of the only bright spots in the report. Twenty states had less child hunger and lower insurance rates for low-income earners.
More than half of fourth-graders from low-income families read below the level of proficiency, putting Illinois in 43rd place. Thirty-five states have less credit card debt and less student loan debt.
The study noted that from 1979 to 2007, 64.9 percent of income growth went to the top one percent of earners in Illinois.
“Growing income inequality threatens to undermine efforts to move more families from welfare to work,” said Clary. “When low-wage jobs do not pay enough to lift a family out of poverty and when the incomes of the poorest families grow only slowly or not at all, policies that encourage work cannot succeed.”
The absolute worst metric for Illinois was the share of K-12 education funding that comes from the state. Illinois came in last at 20.5 percent. Instead of state funds, Illinois uses a complex system relying heavily on local property taxes. As a result, wealthier districts end up with the most funding. In 2014, The Education Law Center at Rutgers ranked Illinois as having the sixth most regressive education funding system in the country.
“The way that we fund education leads to structural inequalities, whereby kids in wealthier parts of the state go to schools with more financial resources, which can create a cycle of disadvantage for kids in poorer areas of the state,” said Clary.
There were 29,693 people living in poverty in Sangamon County in 2013, and about 1.8 million statewide.
A copy of the report as well as information on individual counties can be found at ilpovertyreport.org.
Contact Alan Kozeluh at [email protected].
