Context is always important factor

Published 9:36 pm Tuesday, July 30, 2013

It sure looks like bad news — catastrophic, in fact. The Associated Press headline for a Monday story was “Four out of five U.S. adults will struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare.”

So is it time to panic?

Not so fast. A closer look at the article shows that headline writers aren’t always paying close attention. Also, the headline demonstrates what happens when we let definitions expand in public policy debates.

First, the wording on the headline is incomplete, and therefore misleading. “Four out of five U.S. adults will struggle” seems to indicate that trouble is coming down the tracks.

But the story actually says those adults will struggle at some point in their lives.

“Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream,” the AP report says.

Now, let’s look at those economic and personal disasters: joblessness, near-poverty, or reliance on welfare. There’s no question those conditions are painful to those experiencing them.

But when, in all of American history, have people not struggled with joblessness at least part of their lives? It should be no surprise that most people find themselves between jobs at least once or twice during their working lives. What nations can boast guaranteed, full, and continuous employment for all workers? Certainly not the United States. We never have.

And near-poverty is an example of an expanded definition. We don’t talk about poverty much anymore; what we talk about now is “near-poverty” (a term with many changing definitions) and things like “food insecurity,” which is like hunger, but not quite.

We expand these definitions with the best of intentions; being nearly poor is nearly as bad as being poor. Being “economically insecure” is certainly a bad thing, too.

But in public policy, the goal is to solve problems, and that takes focused efforts. Expanded definitions do little to bring more focus to the fight on poverty and hunger. They usually just result in spreading already-thin resources.

How about “reliance on welfare”? Again, when the data is examined, it contains the qualifier, “at some time in their lives.” Yes, many Americans get assistance when they need it. But most eventually work their way off of assistance.

Like many studies, the one cited by the AP has a political intention: Increasing government assistance.

“Poverty is no longer an issue of ‘them’, it’s an issue of ‘us’,” says Washington University in St. Louis Professor Mark Rank. “Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need.”

The study is also focused on “income inequality,” a phrase that says little, but implies that someone, somewhere is doing something wrong.

But honestly, there’s no reason to panic here. The United States still remains a country in which the poor have the opportunity to rise above poverty. And that’s the right focus.