Poverty

From 2008 to 2011, average monthly applications for food stamps in Baltimore increased by 66 percent, and applications for temporary cash assistance rose 35 percent, according to the Maryland Department of Human Resources. These numbers are the most dramatic of many that all tell the same story: The recession has hit middle- and low-income Baltimore residents hard. "We are seeing a whole new demographic of people: formerly middle-class people living middle-class lives who've lost their jobs and now are struggling to put food on the table," said Deborah Flateman, chief executive officer of the Maryland Food Bank.

More people live in poverty in Baltimore's suburbs than in the city itself, part of a nationwide shift that is challenging the largely urban assistance network built up over decades. Suburban poverty in the Baltimore area grew 58 percent between 2000 and 2011, compared with 4 percent in the city, according to research released Monday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Such lopsided growth in the last decade is the reason the suburban poor now outnumber the urban poor — an eye-opening change for a region long used to thinking of suburban residents as the haves and Baltimoreans as the have-nots.

The Census Bureau has estimated that 9.9 percent of Maryland's population and 13.5 percent of the country's population lived in poverty in 1990. Figures show the number of poor Americans grew to 33.6 million last year, the first increase since 1983.The Evening Sun wants to know if you think Maryland, even with its current budget problems, should be doing more for the state's poor. Should the United States declare another war on poverty to help people improve their lives? Do you think taxes should be raise to provide more money for the poor?

From Bangor to Peoria, in the Huffington Post and in Forbes Magazine, the press is focusing on the minimum wage. While we hear and read about it constantly these days, many of us never take the time to reflect on what it really means. When seen up close, as I do every day here in Baltimore at the Center for Urban Families, the real meaning of "minimum" becomes painfully apparent. Minimum is just that. As Merriam Webster says: "the least quantity assignable, admissible, or possible.

Thank you for Patrick Whelan and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's deeply moving remembrance of one of Maryland's finest sons ever, Sargent Shriver ( "Living the faith," Jan 23). His incredible legacy of service and selflessness includes even more than the Peace Corps, Head Start, Job Corps, Volunteers in Service to America, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents and other programs Ms. Townsend and Mr. Whelan cite. Forty-seven years ago, Mr. Shriver also created and provided the groundwork for the Community Action Programs — agencies that work to help low-income and other vulnerable people and families attain economic security.

When I learned that single motherhood was the lowest rung of the prosperity ladder 40 years ago, I asked myself, "Why would I choose that?" Is that still the problem today? Where are the fathers? Where are the husbands? Must fathers live apart from mothers and children so that the government at all levels can give them money? Is it working? Are Baltimore, Maryland, and the federal government proving themselves good parents? Can we reverse this? Are kids so accustomed to having government buy food and shelter that they only have to pay for iPhones?

The stark irony of your recent editorial ("The nonworking poor," Sept. 18) appearing on the same page as a Doonesbury comic strip noting that 400 families control more wealth than 50 percent of Americans' combined was inescapable. Thank you for your thoughtful, balanced analysis of the reality of poverty across our nation. Clearly, the recession is not over for more than 46 million poor Americans. When nearly one in eight Americans is officially poor, we must examine whether a family of four can exist on $22,351 year.

Here's something to get everyone in the back-to-school spirit, something that might seem like a complicated math problem, but turns out to be a simple equation: chs + wft + wuy> 21amthc = ∞

From Bangor to Peoria, in the Huffington Post and in Forbes Magazine, the press is focusing on the minimum wage. While we hear and read about it constantly these days, many of us never take the time to reflect on what it really means. When seen up close, as I do every day here in Baltimore at the Center for Urban Families, the real meaning of "minimum" becomes painfully apparent. Minimum is just that. As Merriam Webster says: "the least quantity assignable, admissible, or possible.

Poverty is always relative, but that does not make it less real. True, Americans whose food stamps give out before the end of every month don't suffer the severe malnutrition and marginal existence that defines poverty in many parts of the world. But that's little comfort to a hungry child, or to a desperate parent trying to rock that child to sleep.For years, conservatives have claimed that government definitions misstate the extent of poverty in the United States. If the formula accurately reflected the effect of government benefits on household benefits, they argued, the poverty level in this country would drop dramatically.

Study after study demonstrates that poverty is a powerful driver of poor health. Many of America's leading hospitals exist in poor communities. Could these powerful institutions (in economic as well as medical terms) help overcome the deeper sources of failing health among the 46 million Americans living in poverty? A little-known provision of Obamacare provides an unexpected opening. Section 9007 of the Affordable Care Act requires every nonprofit hospital to complete a Community Health Needs Assessment every three years to engage the local community on its general health problems and explain how the hospital intends to address them.

Bonnie Lane stands in front of Baltimore's City Hall, arms crossed, lips pursed, on a mission. Her stance is memorialized in a photo and article on the pages of Word on the Street, the fledgling newspaper she helped launch nearly a year ago. The "street paper" — one of 23 in the United States — is produced by homeless people, their advocates, and those who were once homeless, such as Lane. "You need to give people hope," Lane, 39, said. "Once they lose hope, they're not motivated to make things better for themselves.

"Claudie Hukill," on stage at Venus Theatre on C Street through Dec. 23, is a play about a poor family, struggling to survive hard economic times and personal tragedies in a West Virginia mining town. Set in 1972, the play is filled with generational, environmental, social, moral and class conflicts, centered around the main character and the play's namesake, Claudie Hukill. Although Claudie, a coal miner and town hero, is never seen, his presence is felt throughout the play as the drama surrounding his disappearance unfolds and escalates to a powerful ending.

The way some people talk in Washington, you could get the idea that Social Security and Medicare are little more than numbers in a budget. Yet for families in Maryland and all over America, Social Security and Medicare have a deeper meaning: They are the very foundation of security in retirement. Social Security and Medicare enable millions of older Americans to survive financially each month, after years of working hard and paying taxes to earn these protections. One day, younger people will count on these same pillars of security for their own independence and dignity in old age. Here are a couple numbers that lawmakers considering cuts to these programs should keep in mind: Half of America's seniors get by on less than $20,000 a year.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson came to Baltimore on Nov. 8 to propose a reallocation of $70 million in funds currently allocated by the state for a new juvenile jail. Jackson, City Council President Jack Young, local ministers and others organizers of the event at the War Memorial were advocating for a reallocation in favor of "affirmative opportunities. " Such opportunities include proven alternatives to detention: recreational activities, jobs programs and neighborhood redevelopment, all aimed at changing daily life for Baltimore youth.

The poverty rate in Baltimore held steady last year with about 1 in 4 counted as impoverished by the U.S. Census Bureau - a situation that economists say reflects the fits and starts of the nation's economic recovery. After a jump of more than 4 percent in the city's poverty rate between 2009 and 2010, the rate held steady in 2011, according to data released Thursday. That stagnation reflects the national trend. In the past two years, 15 percent of the U.S. population was living in poverty, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, the year the Great Recession began, according to census estimates.

Though the poverty gap between blacks and whites in Maryland narrowed significantly during the 1980s, the latest Census report shows blacks are still three times more likely to live in poverty than whites. The persistent economic gap between blacks and whites appears to be an intractable problem, affecting debate on issues from school funding and health care to welfare dependency, drug abuse and crime.No single factor is responsible for the gap. The loss of low-skill manufacturing jobs from urban areas, the increase in single-parent households over the last generation and the continuing legacy of racial discrimination all have contributed to the present crisis.

After three years of increases, the nation's poverty rate held steady from 2010 to 2011, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau that also detailed trends in health insurance coverage and median income. Nationwide, 15 percent of people, or about 46.2 million individuals, lived below the poverty line in 2011, according to estimates in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. Last year, the Census Bureau considered a family of two adults and two children in poverty if its annual household income was under $22,811.

Thank you to Dan Rodricks for his recent column "Our official national lie" (Aug. 8), which highlighted the discrepancy between the federal poverty line and what real families can actually afford. A recent study by Feeding America, the nation's largest anti-hunger organization, found that fully 47 percent of the 740,240 Marylanders who are food-insecure do not qualify for any government assistance programs. They make too much for SNAP, WIC or the Free and Reduced-Price meal program at school, which have eligibilities ranging from 100 percent to 200 percent of the poverty line, but they have too little to make ends meet.