Years into the economic recovery, poverty and economic insecurity remain far too high. In fact, as the most recent Census Bureau data reveals, the share of Americans with incomes below the poverty line—at 15.5 percent—barely budged between 2013 and 2014.
In some of the worst performing states, more than one in five residents live in poverty.
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Adding insult to injury, many of these poorly performing states have doubled down on conservative policies that have made life harder for low-income people:
- Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee have allowed wages to stagnate by not setting their minimum wage above the federal level of $7.25. For example, in Georgia, employees that are not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act can be paid as little as $5.15 per hour. This failure to raise wages has meant that a single parent of two children who works full time does not earn enough to escape poverty.
- Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, Tennessee, and West Virginia maintain restrictive asset tests, which decrease low-income families’ self-sufficiency by requiring them to spend down their savings or sell off assets to access assistance. Assets are important for economic mobility generally—for example, when working-age families can put aside even sums of less than $2,000—they are less likely to face hardships such as running short on food, forgoing needed health care, or having the utilities turned off. But, in states like Georgia with particularly stringent tests, families can only have $1,000 in assets to access cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, with few exceptions.
- Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas (under the leadership of newly-elected Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson), Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi have instituted drug testing that stigmatizes public assistance applicants even though they test positive for drug use at a rate lower than the general population. In Tennessee, officials found that less than 0.2% of all applicants tested positive, mirroring results in other states like Mississippi and Arizona. The cost to states for this wasteful testing has exceeded $1 million dollars collectively—money that could have been spent on strengthening the program.
