Ending poverty one judgment at a time

While making final remarks during the recent debate on changes to Arkansas Works – Arkansas’s version of Medicaid expansion that provides affordable coverage to adults earning very low incomes – Senate President Pro Tem Jonathan Dismang said, “What I am very tired of is taking this entire population as a whole and trying to say they’re all deadbeats.”

Deadbeats.

Our state’s progress and competitiveness rely on creating an environment where all citizens can grow and thrive. That competitive edge is threatened when we pass policies that disproportionately impact Arkansans living in the poorest economic conditions. These policies are often a result of damaging judgments about the values of those living in poverty, which is why Senator Dismang’s comment stood out to me. His impassioned statement spoke to the challenge that lawmakers face to make good public policy without demonizing the policy’s targeted population.

Poverty involves more than short-term struggles like keeping the lights on. It also means long-term lack of access to opportunities and job connections that higher income people have by virtue of their social circles. This problem impacts more Arkansans than you may realize. In Arkansas, one in five adults live in poverty. It’s even worse for children; a quarter of our state’s future workforce, children under the age of 18, live in poverty. Because children are not separate from their family unit, when their parents don’t do well, they don’t do well.

When our value judgments influence policies, we miss the opportunity to see people for who they are instead of what they need. The best policies come from seeing what actually works. For instance, I know a single mother named Pam who worked two jobs to provide for her two daughters. Although Pam worked constantly, she still could not afford all her family’s necessities without assistance from the SNAP Program (formerly the Food Stamp Program). She used the assistance to fill an important gap for her family. Pam later completed college and secured a full-time job with a great salary and benefits.

Although she needed public assistance at a point in her life, some would have considered her a deadbeat. Yet, she wasn’t.

Because of good public policy, she had the additional support to achieve her long-term goals. Today, Pam holds a master’s degree and owns a home. I would challenge policymakers to find people in your district who represent the success of public programs and find out more about their story.

Good policies have the power to make success stories like Pam’s less rare. Moving out of poverty takes tenacity and the right opportunities. For every bootstrapper who made it, there are even more who tried just as hard and failed because personal grit just isn’t always enough to outweigh the fickle challenges of poverty. Everyone faces bumps along the way, but those bumps are more jarring the lower your income. Effective policies serve as shock absorbers and soften the impact of these bumps that otherwise could permanently trap families in poverty.

Our interdependent economy makes it so important to have policies that benefit all. By not providing everyone with the tools to succeed, we will continue to stunt our overall economic growth. When we lose the ability to see people for who they are, because we see them only through the prism of poverty, we are left with policies that value some people over others. We become a society that justifies the double standard that help should only be extended to those deemed deserving of it.

Moreover, we become a state where lawmakers have to convince their colleagues that Arkansans living in poverty are not deadbeats but are people who want to improve their lives, too.
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Editor’s note: Tamika Edwards is the Director of Governmental Affairs for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families (AACF). Opinions, commentary and other essays posted in this space are wholly the view of the author(s). They may not represent the opinion of the owners of Talk Business & Politics.