Despite being the second-wealthiest state in the nation, New Jersey has a higher real poverty rate than 35 other states, with about 1.35 million — or one in seven — residents living in poverty, according to the recent Supplemental Poverty Measure released by the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s 44 percent more than the 930,000 that are living under the official federal poverty level.
The number of additional families falling into poverty using the more accurate measure is frightening: While the official poverty rate for poverty in New Jersey averaged 10.7 percent between 2010 and 2012, the supplemental rate was 15.5 percent. This is the second-largest difference of any of the 50 states (after California); nationally the difference was just one percentage point.
The main reason for the high level of real poverty is New Jersey’s high cost of living, particularly for housing. The new census findings confirm other research from our colleagues at Legal Services of New Jersey and the United Way of Northwest New Jersey, which has consistently shown that real poverty in New Jersey is much higher than what is reported in the official poverty statistics.

The supplemental poverty measure is a much more detailed look at poverty than the more frequently cited Federal Poverty Level, which is a single national rate that looks only at a family’s gross income and compares it to a family’s budget in 1969 adjusted for inflation.
The supplemental measure includes income from all sources — including non-cash benefits like subsidized housing and nutrition assistance — but it also subtracts necessary expenses for critical goods and services like payroll taxes, childcare and work-related expenses, and adjusts for the widely varying costs of living by state.
Under this more accurate measure, poverty rates for children, who have access to a lot of safety-net programs, — decrease, while rates for adults, particularly seniors, increase. Seniors are often thought of as being much better off because of Social Security, but they do have high housing costs and out-of-pocket medical costs. Nevertheless, the poverty rate for children still remains the highest of all age groups under the more accurate measure.
The supplemental measure also highlights the vital importance of the social safety net. Most federal programs that assist low-income Americans reduce poverty. Other than Social Security, the most effective programs are the refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and SNAP (formerly called food stamps). Without the refundable tax credits, for example, the national poverty rate for children would be a third higher.
Yet these are the very programs facing hostile attack in D.C. SNAP benefits were cut across the board this month, forcing millions of families to make do with less food. The ongoing automatic budget cuts known as sequestration have also cut important work supports like childcare for struggling families.
But the threat is far larger, with the House having passed legislation essentially gutting SNAP and making millions like the long-term unemployed ineligible. Efforts by the House to derail the Affordable Care Act, if successful, would force many moderate-income families into bankruptcy because of uncovered catastrophic medical bills.
New Jersey’s leaders — particularly its members of Congress of both parties — should continue to support effective antipoverty measures and oppose federal cuts. Meanwhile, the state’s leaders in Trenton need to step up to the plate and enact state-based measures to stem the dramatic increase in families falling into poverty.
There’s some good news on that front: The recent approval of a minimum wage increase and the state’s decision to expand Medicaid eligibility will bring some real economic relief to hundreds of thousands of low-income New Jerseyans. But there is more to be done. The most important immediate step New Jersey lawmakers can take to help struggling working families is to fully and immediately restore 2010’s 20 percent cut to the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit, which resulted in a de facto tax increase of about $150 million for a half-million working families. It is important that the EITC be put on the front burner in 2014 and that it be untethered from broader political fights over larger tax cuts. These hard-working families have suffered long enough.
Policymakers also need to address New Jersey’s unrelenting housing crisis — probably the greatest cause of poverty in the state. When one in four renters spends half of his or her income on rent, and the rate of foreclosure is the second-highest in the nation, there’s clearly something wrong. We need a consistent and fair housing plan for the middle class, the working poor, and the homeless that makes New Jersey an affordable place to live for everyone.
========

I don’t buy into the mythology that most poor people are willfully and contentedly poor, happy to live with the help of handouts from a benevolent big government that is equally happy to keep them dependent.

These are all arguments based on shame, meant to distance traditional power structures from emerging ones, to allow for draconian policy arguments from supposedly caring people. These arguments require faith in personal failure as justification for calling our fellow citizens feckless or doctrinally disfavored.

Those who espouse such arguments must root for failures so that they’re proved right. They need their worst convictions to be affirmed: that other people’s woes are due solely to their bad choices and bad behaviors; that there are no systematic suppressors at play; that the way to success is wide open to all those who would only choose it.

Any of us in the country who were born poor, or minority, or female, or otherwise different — particularly in terms of gender or sexual identity — know better.

Misogyny and sexism, racism, income inequality, patriarchy, and homophobia and heteronormative ideals course through the culture like a pathogen in the blood, infecting the whole of the being beneath the surface.

So it is to the people with challenges that I would like to speak today. I know your pains and your struggles. I share them. It is incredibly dispiriting when people are dismissive of the barriers we must overcome simply to make it to equal footing. I know. It is infuriating when people offer insanely naïve solutions to our suffering: “Stop whining and being a victim!” I know.

But I also would like to share with you the way I’ve learned to deal with it, hoping that maybe it will offer you some encouragement.

I decided long ago to achieve as an act of defiance — to define my own destiny and refuse to have it defined for me. I fully understand that trying hard doesn’t always guarantee success. Success is often a fluky thing, dependent as much on luck and favor as on hard work. But while hard work may not guarantee success, not working hard almost always guarantees failure.

I frame the argument to myself this way: If you know that you are under assault, recognize it, and defend yourself.

Trying hard and working hard is its own reward. It feeds the soul. It affirms your will and your power. And it radiates from you, lighting the way for all those who see you.

When I am asked to give speeches, I often include this analogy:

For some folks, life is a hill. You can either climb or stay at the bottom.

It’s not fair. It’s not right. But it is so. Some folks are born halfway up the hill and others on the top. The rest of us are not. Life doles out favors in differing measures, often as a result of historical injustice and systematic bias. That’s a hurtful fact, one that must be changed. We should all work toward that change.

In the meantime, until that change is real, what to do if life gives you the hill?

You can curse it. You can work hard to erode it. You can try to find a way around it. Those are all understandable endeavors. Staying at the bottom is not.

You may be born at the bottom, but the bottom was not born in you. You have it within you to be better than you were, to make more of your life than was given to you by life.

This is not to say that we can always correct life’s inequities, but simply that we honor ourselves in the trying.

History is cluttered with instances of the downtrodden lifting themselves up. The spirit and endurance that it requires is not a historical artifact but a living thing that abides in each of us, part of the bloodline, written in the tracks of tears and the sweat of toil.

If life for you is a hill, be a world-class climber.