And did the welfare reform of the 1990s really exacerbate extreme poverty in the United States? Despite devoting nearly as much attention to soul-searching as to analysis I found this article at Vox by Dylan Matthews devoted to those subjects helpful. Here’s its kernel:
The most comprehensive response to date — by University of Chicago professor Bruce Meyer, his colleagues Derek Wu and Victoria Mooers, and the Census Bureau’s Carla Medalia — has just been publicly released, and concludes that true $2-a-day poverty, after adjusting the data properly, is extremely rare.
“Our best estimate of the extreme poverty rate,†they write, is 0.11 percent for individuals as of 2011. That implies that about 336,160 people are in extremely poor households, far lower than the couple million children estimated by Edin and Shaefer. The vast majority of those people, they argue, are childless adults, and the extreme poverty rate for parents is close to zero.
Rather than devoting resources to new anti-poverty programs or expanding those already in place, we would be better off devoting attention to reforming our approaches to dealing with substance abuse and with mental illness.
And those are both tough nuts to crack. I have niece, about 38 now, whose always been “off”. She’s been diagnosed as bi-polar, off medication, she can be extremely violent, on medication, she’s a smiling zombie, but she prefers to medicate herself with meth and alcohol and today lives on the street, despite her parents every effort. If she comes to visit, they have to watch her all the time, because she always steals whatever she thinks she can sell.
How do you fix this? Don’t say prison, she’s been there too.
@Gray Shambler
… she’s a smiling zombie …
She needs her meds adjusted, and it will most likely be a custom cocktail. The key is that she has to work with the psychiatrist, but many people will not. Also, she will be on it for life, but she will have the normal range of emotions – happy, sad, depressed, etc.
Even with a good doctor and the right meds, the big problem is money.
Actually, as big a problem is getting her to co-operate.
That is always a problem.
I agree with the focus on mental health and substance abuse. Both of those are essentially unavailable in some places, or you have to drive so far it amounts to not being available. Many areas dont have adequate resources. (There is no shortage of quack inpatient care in states where such “care” is legally protected or not punished.)
Historically, insurance plans did not cover these two problems, or did not cover them well. Once the ACA is overturned we will go back to them not being covered by insurance.
If you read the entire paper, it noted that the literature does not account for homeless people. In my experience a very large percentage of those are mentally ill and/or have substance abuse issues.
Steve
Would like to see uniform standards and paperwork for the various federally supported programs and some pruning of sinecures.
Re: MH/DDA, yep, lots of help needed, however, getting competent staff to where needed is part of the problem, the other is convincing the horse he is thirsty.
That’s a good part of the motivation for my emphasis on mental health and substance abuse treatment.
“the other is convincing the horse he is thirsty.”
Agreed, but I think it helps to see what many addiction people think about it. It is a chronic disease and should be treated that way. You may not get people off of their drug forever, but you may get them clean for a few years, then they relapse, then you repeat. So like many chronic diseases addicts often need lifetime care.
Steve
Steve, Thank you for that, but the law only allows voluntary commitment, even for a short time. I wonder if that’s the best we can do.
Good luck. You hope that during one of those short stays something gets through to them. Dont get too excited when they are in remission or too despondent when they relapse. It is a life time problem.
Steve