People have a lot of ideas about who is poor and why — some accurate, some inaccurate. We prefer the facts, and believe that the more people know them the more people will support the smart policies that we advocate for today’s families to be economically secure while raising a family. When it comes to working families living in or near poverty, FFO Executive Director Andrea Paluso has long said,
A job should be a pathway out of poverty, not another form of it.
This June, 2013 report from the Oregon Center for Public Policy paints a real picture of Oregon’s working poor families — and suggests that lawmakers can help ensure that work pays for poor families, by funding proven programs like Employment Related Day Care (ERDC) that help parents work and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which allows low-income working families to keep more of what they earn to cover basic needs.
One of the four interesting charts in the report shows that an incredible, shameful 33% of single mothers in Oregon live below the (too low) federal poverty level:
