Success resides at the intersection of opportunity and motivation. Hope lives there, too. For low-income Hawaii families with young children, programs that focus on both generations — parents and kids — are more likely to foster the lasting benefits that break a multigenerational cycle of poverty.
Across the nation, more kids are growing up poorer today than they did a quarter-century ago — a fact that a new Kids Count policy report notes cannot be blamed on the post-recession economy alone.
Reversing this dangerous trend requires a common-sense approach that bolsters economic policies that benefit low-income families, and promotes education and training programs that keep children in school and help parents develop skills they need to support themselves and their families.
"Creating Opportunity for Families: A Two-Generation Approach," the report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, explains that some proven initiatives designed to lift 33,000 Hawaii families with young children out of poverty would require new financial investment, such as enacting an earned income tax credit that helps the working poor keep more of their paychecks, and expanding early-education programs that include parents as participants.
Hawaii has fallen woefully behind in that latter effort, with the regrettable failure of the recent constitutional amendment that would have allowed private-public educational partnerships to flourish.
Other improvements require not money but a different way of thinking, starting with the recognition that too many government agencies devoted to reducing poverty are working in isolation. They focus on helping either children or parents, but not both. Integrating these services is the way to multiply their benefits.
This two-generation strategy is imperative, since we know that 42 percent of children born to parents at the bottom of the income ladder stay there. According to the report, children living in poverty are more likely to have young, uneducated, single parents who are not fluent in English and also lack the work training and reliable child-care options necessary to land and keep good-paying jobs. Those factors threaten the entire family’s stability and can lead to lifelong difficulties for the children.
Taking an utterly pragmatic view, there’s a long-term risk for the taxpayers, too. Our community thrives when it is made up of stable families who value hard work and education, and who have the opportunity to transform those beliefs into a viable lifestyle.
We must create an economic and social framework that eases an exit from poverty, rather than reinforces it as a continuing condition. From a policymaking perspective, that means taking the entire family into account. Federal, state and county governments should:
» Favor tax policies that increase take-home pay for poor families, such as the EITC, the Child Tax Credit and the renters’ tax credit, and provide incentives such as free or subsidized child-care that help low-income parents work or attend college or job-training programs.
» Promote public-private partnerships, share information among agencies and adopt a "no wrong door" approach that streamlines eligible families’ access to existing programs.
» Use existing programs, whether currently aimed solely at children or adults, to build self-reliance for the whole family. Public schools are natural settings for this.
The Casey Foundation report emphasizes that early-childhood and K12 programs should partner with educational, employment and job-training programs for their students’ parents. Some schools in Hawaii already do this, and should be held up as models, not only for providing the services but also for motivating eligible parents to take advantage of them.
The mind shift necessary for this two-generation approach to work ultimately demands as much from the low-income parents as it does from the various agencies trying to assist them and their children.
Helping people help themselves remains the truest path out of poverty.
