| Date: | October 1, 2017 |
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“It’s great to see child poverty numbers go down instead of going up,” said Sam Magavern, executive director of the Partnership for the Public Good.
The child poverty fell 10 percentage points to 44 percent, the lowest rate since at least 2010.
The poverty rate for minority groups remains higher than the overall poverty rate in the city, but the recently released 2016 American Community Survey showed the percentage of African-American and Latino residents living in poverty has dropped sharply.
"Reducing poverty requires a community wide approach," said Mayor Byron W. Brown. "The collaborative plan that we have put in place in the city is helping to reduce poverty rates in Buffalo, especially childhood poverty, and the latest Census numbers demonstrate that our plan is working. Childhood poverty is still much higher than we would like to see and clearly we all have much more work to do.”
Community leaders greeted the new data with either cautious optimism or skepticism. Nearly one-third of city residents – 30.5 percent – still lives in poverty, a figure that has not changed much this decade.
But some see the numbers – particularly child poverty – as a sign that Buffalo is starting to succeed in its battle with poverty. Others question whether the numbers truly represent a diminishing of poverty or a just a minor ripple in a sea of overwhelming financial distress.
“It’s great to see child poverty numbers go down instead of going up,” said Sam Magavern, executive director of the Partnership for the Public Good.
Child poverty in the City of Buffalo fluctuates, but has fallen to its lowest percentage since at least 2010.
For a while, he said, that figure was one of the most disturbing statistics in Buffalo. Just last year, the American Community Survey results showed Buffalo child poverty at 54 percent.
In the past, Magavern said, “it didn’t just go up, it went up dramatically.”
In 2015, Buffalo's child poverty rate ranked second-highest – behind only Detroit – among 113 cities with populations of at least 200,000, according to the American Community Survey's one-year snapshot.
In 2016, Buffalo ranked No. 7, behind Cleveland, Detroit, Rochester and Memphis, as well as Laredo, Texas, and San Bernadino, Calif.
Buffalo's 10 percentage-point drop was the fourth-steepest decline in the nation, according to a Buffalo News analysis of the census data.
But some battling poverty on the front lines still don't see much to like in the survey results.
“I’m not impressed,” said L. Nathan Hare, chief executive officer of the Community Action Organization of Erie County.
He said a child poverty rate of 44 percent is nothing to celebrate. He also pointed to the overall poverty rate, which has stayed fairly consistent over time, except for an increase last year.
“When we look at these poverty numbers, you have to compare where we were before the bottom fell out of the economy," Hare said. "Those are the numbers where poverty has persisted.”
Those who view the declining child and minority poverty numbers with cautious optimism point to various signs that the economy is growing and benefiting more people who are struggling to make ends meet.
George Palumbo, an economics and finance professor at Canisius College, pointed out that both income and earnings are starting to grow in this region. Last year, he said, percent growth in pay for Erie County finally matched national growth percentages.
"We have rarely had our earnings grow as fast as the rest of the country," he said, referring to his analysis of quarterly employment and wages data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
His report also notes that the metropolitan area has finally surpassed employment levels from the recessions in 2001 and the 2008 recessions.
In regard to the greater change in Buffalo child poverty figures compared to overall poverty figures, Palumbo said the explanation is murkier. But he speculated that with so many city residents who would otherwise be classified as working poor, the impact of higher earnings for disadvantaged parents is leading yielding a greater positive impact on children.
Many adult individuals, however, remain unemployed and are not receiving any benefit from rising wages, he said.
Brown recounted various city anti-poverty efforts and partnerships, including summer youth employment programs and joint work with the United Way and Community Foundation of Buffalo.
“Looking forward, we are partnering with the state, Erie County, not-for-profits and people living in poverty themselves as part of the Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative," Brown said.
The falling child poverty rate for Buffalo closely echos those at the state and national levels.
The national Kids Count Data Center pointed out that according to the latest data, 19.5 percent of children nationwide live in poverty, which translates into 14 million kids. That figure has been falling since 2014 and nearly returned to its pre-recession level of 18 percent. Kids Count points to policies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Affordable Care Act and the raising of the minimum wage as likely contributing factors.
The federal government estimated 20.7 percent of children in New York State live in poverty, slightly higher than in Erie and Niagara counties, where 19.9 percent and 17.9 percent of children, respectively, are poor.
In Buffalo, the overall poverty figures remain more stable and fell slower than the child poverty or minority poverty figures. Some of this is likely due to the survey sample size, with the overall population of poor citizens much larger than the child population and therefore less susceptible to big statistical swings from one year to the next.
Even so, some note that the child poverty rate is at its lowest level so far this decade.
Magavern echoed Palumbo's belief that the stronger economy may be contributing to the decrease in childhood poverty rates in Buffalo.
"Unemployment has been going down, and there’s been some improvement in wages, an increase in the state minimum wage," he said. "That could certainly be a factor."
But the Rev. Kinzer Pointer, chairman of the Erie County Poverty Advisory Commission, said there isn't necessarily a correlation between an improving economy and a reduction in poverty among marginalized populations.
"There's been poverty rising in all the time that we've seen economic progress in the city," Pointer said.
Everyone agrees more must be done.
“In most census tracts with kids under five, the numbers are just high,” Hare said.
Typically in Buffalo, there is a much higher percentage of single women-headed households with kids younger than 5, he said, and those women generally have lower incomes, in the $20,000 to $40,000 range. Many single parents are shut out of positions that pay “really good money,” so they compete for lower-paying jobs, he said.
"You end up in a position as a store clerk, a sales clerk," he said. "You can’t have a woman making $20,000 a year with two or three kids."
Magavern said reducing costs for those in poverty is just as important as raising wages and creating more employment opportunities. Affordable housing, adequate public transportation – those things matter just as much as taking home a bigger paycheck, he said.
"It’s about costs, especially for basic items like food, transportation, housing – the big items in your monthly budget – and policy solutions," he said.
Those who have a ground-level look at poverty aren't ready to buy the latest set of numbers.
Samuel L. Radford III, a Buffalo Public Schools parent activist who also works for the Community Action Organization, said it's possible the numbers reflect the fact that more poor families are being pushed out beyond the city limits; that with the gentrification of the city, poverty is becoming less concentrated and more diluted. But it's still there.
"They're just as poor, and it's just as bad," he said.
Pointer, pastor of Agape Fellowship Baptist Church, also questioned the accuracy of the data, stating that a 10 percentage point drop in child poverty from one year to the next seems impossible.
"What I see every day in my work, and what we've seen working across the county over the course of the last year – we've seen entrenched poverty," he said. "To see this type of precipitous drop that's not indicated in others ways and places is a little problematic."
He'll be asking numbers crunchers on the county poverty committee to take a closer look at the survey data, he said.
"If we can discover some validity in these numbers, we need to figure out why," he said, "and we need to keep working."