Poverty in NC is everybody’s business, says N&O ‘Women and Children First?’ panel

Poverty is a choice, speakers said at a Thursday night forum. But not the choice of those who are poor.

Instead poverty is a public-policy choice: a choice to pay child care workers low wages, a choice not to expand Medicaid to those who can’t afford private insurance, a choice to phase out corporate income taxes before enrolling more children in quality pre-K programs.

Thursday’s online forum was held by The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun as part of “Women and Children First?” an ongoing project highlighting the voices of single mothers and the policies that help or hurt them.

Missed the event? Watch a replay on YouTube or on Facebook.

Reporter Tammy Grubb hosted the event with single mother LaSherron Geddie of Raleigh, Heba Atwa of the nonpartisan N.C. Budget and Tax Center; and state Rep. Ashton Wheeler Clemmons, a Guilford County Democrat.

Atwa pushed back against some readers, who blamed single mothers for their financial struggles in comments responding to the first stories in the series.

“It’s not going to be solved with fewer lattes and nail salon visits,” Atwa said. “And how we define poverty is so important because it’s used to determine eligibility for crucial assistance programs ... and also, it informs our perceptions of how pervasive poverty is in our state.”

An estimated 1 in 3 of the 1.2 million families below the federal poverty level in North Carolina are single-women and their children. That’s nearly a half million people, Grubb noted.

Geddie is among them. The single mother had a good-paying job until she got cancer and had to take medical leave and later got laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I don’t go to the nail salon; my daughter does my nails,” she said. “But it’s deeper than that.”

Geddie, whose family is living in an extended-stay motel, has had to choose between buying food and buying gas to take her children to medical appointments, she said. She’s heard the comments of those who are quick to assign blame for being poor.

“It is humiliating,” said Geddie, whose oldest daughter is in college. “But with humility, you find humbleness.”

Living income standard

The thing is, Atwa said, the current definition of poverty doesn’t even capture all families in need.

The formula, created in the mid-1960s, took a “conservative” food budget and multiplied it by three, assuming that a typical family would spend a third of its income on groceries. It doesn’t reflect today’s reality, Atwa said.

Instead, the Budget and Tax Center advocates a “living income standard” to weigh eligibility for assistance that would consider food, clothing, housing and transportation, among other expenses. Using that formula, a mother with two children would need $60,000 to run her household, Atwa said. That’s 2.6 times the federal poverty level.

Put another way, that mom would have to work 161 hours a week at minimum wage to make $60,000, Atwa said.

And she’d need more like $70,000 in higher-priced areas of the state like Wake and Mecklenburg counties, she added.

Expanding Medicaid

Wheeler Clemons is one of the sponsors of state legislation to expand Medicaid in North Carolina.

Helping parents and children is the morally and economically right thing to do, she said. But the state is far from where it needs to be.

Only 6% of eligible children up to age 3 are in early Head Start programs, she said. Only 53% of eligible children are in pre-K programs.

And while the legislature came close to expanding Medicaid in the recent session, it can’t come soon enough for the estimated 634,000 North Carolinians it would help cover, she said.

“We’ve had red states and blue states and purple states all over the country pass Medicaid expansion,” Wheeler Clemmons said. “North Carolina is one of only 12 [states where] the current leadership has chosen not do so. And last year, the federal government passed new incentives to make it easier and more cost-effective for us to do it.”

The first stories in “Women and Children First?” focused on how we define poverty and introduced readers to families. Upcoming stories will dive deep into issues like housing, tax policy and how poverty disproportionately affects families of color in North Carolina.

The pandemic has shown many that financial need is not a moral failing and that government choices can make a difference, Atwa said. More companies are considering the support given to families when choosing where to locate or expand, she said.

Wheeler Clemmons is a former teacher and principal whose mother was a guidance counselor and whose father instilled in her a desire to give back. Being a legislator was not in her “grand plan of life,” she said.

“Really, my driving force is that every child is innocent to where and whom they were born to,” Wheeler Clemmons said. “Every child deserves the same opportunity at a healthy, happy, positive, successful life.

“And for many families, because of the historic inequities of our country, it is harder for some families and some children,” she said. “But it’s all of our collective responsibility.”