Tag: Low Income Families

Fatty Foods Effects Everything

The debate rages on over the amount of obesity there is in the US…I have heard that it is 6 out of 10 people are overweight.

Back in the day when I was employed as an electrician for a local housing authority, I was always encountering huge damn cockroaches….they seemed much larger than the ones I encountered elsewhere…I thought it was just my imagination….but I was mistaken.

I read an article on livescience.com:

Cockroaches may be tiny enough to slip through the smallest of cracks, but just like humans, these eternal pests can get fat on an unhealthy diet.

As part of a decade’s worth of research on cockroaches, Patricia Moore of the University of Exeter studied how female cockroaches change their mating behavior in response to their diet, specifically what they eat when they are young.

To find out, Moore and her colleagues picked young female cockroach nymphs and divided them into two dietary groups. Half were fed a good-quality balanced diet of protein-rich fish food and high-carbohydrate oatmeal, while the rest were raised on fish food only.

After the last molt, when the nymphs became adults, the team switched the diets of some animals. Half of the cockroaches raised with good quality diet lost their oatmeal, while half of the bugs fed poorly were promoted to a good-quality diet.

Eighteen days after the switch, the diet control ended and some of the surviving cockroaches were dissected. The rest were allowed to live on and reproduce.

The results: While the lifespan of the members of both groups was about the same, the cockroaches on the poor diet were fatter and took longer to mature.

Moore suggests that the poorly fed bugs were storing up excess fat at the expense of their growth in case their dietary options got even worse.

The effects of unbalanced meals continued throughout the cockroaches’ lives, even for the few that were switched to good-quality food.

Females that ate a poor-quality diet were less willing to mate and less likely to produce offspring. They were also more picky and spent more time considering possible mates.

I was relieved to see that I was not hallucinating while employed by low income housing.  Since most poor people have unhealthy diets, then the roaches would also.

Maybe this will help those in power come up with a way to see that the poor eat more healthy.  But I am not holding my breath.

The Working Poor

A report released Tuesday by the Working Poor Families Project reveals that more than 28 percent of American families with one or both parents employed are living in poverty.

The report, “Still Working Hard, Still Falling Short,” is based on data for the period from 2004 through 2006 gathered from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.

The report finds that 9.6 million households can be described as low-income or “working poor”—defined as families that earn less than 200 percent of the official poverty level. There were 350,000 more such families in 2006 than in 2002. More than 21 million children now live in low-income working families—an increase of 800,000 in four years.

The report documents the sharp decline in living standards for wide layers of the working class, the result of decades of corporate downsizing and wage-cutting presided over by Democratic and well as Republican administrations. It shows that poverty-level jobs are increasingly common and are held by broad sections of the population. Contrary to certain stereotypes promoted by the media, the majority of families living on poverty wages are neither immigrants, minorities or families with a single parent.

The report notes that working poor families “lack the earnings necessary to meet their basic needs—a struggle exacerbated by soaring prices for food, gas, health and education.” About 60 percent of low-income working families are forced to spend more than one-third of their income on housing, and nearly 40 percent lack health insurance for one or both parents.

These figures seem to go up every year, but few notice, unless you are unfortunate enough to be in the multitude of the working poor.

What Will The Bailout Failure Mean To The Poor?

This is from the Progressive Policy Institute’s Moving Up Blog:

The House voted against the economic bailout with 226 members voting against and 207 for it, causing the Dow to drop as much as 700 points.  No one knows exactly how the next few days will play out, but we will see one of three things: Congress will renew negotiations and pass a slightly altered version, they will go back to the drawing board and pass a completely different version, or they will do nothing.

What does this mean for low-income Americans?  If Congress somehow passes a new package, we know one thing for certain: money will be tight at the federal, state, local and individual level and we can’t count on a big boost in spending for anti-poverty programs. That means that over the next few years poverty advocates are going to have to be opportunistic and creative in identifying strategies to assist low-income workers in the context of other policy areas.

For example, we know that the next president and Congress will have a significant debate next year over taxes.  While tax policy isn’t always at the top of our minds when looking to reduce poverty, this is the perfect time to insist that any tax cut not only help those in the middle class but increase the size of the middle class by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.

In addition, while we also saw crude oil drop below $100 per barrel today due to economic anxiety, both presidential candidates have made energy independence a key priority. Creating a new energy economy will have a significant impact on the lives of low-income Americans.  While there may not be as much money for subsidies and tax credits when Congress finally takes up this issue, the government must play a key role in facilitating the expansion of alternative energies.  As they expand, so will the green collar job opportunities – such as retrofitting buildings – that will benefit many individuals who are struggling to find a high-wage job.  These are just two examples. There will be more, but we will have to be very creative in what are likely to be some very lean years.

Venezuela Helps Low Income Families

The Venezuelan-owned Oil Company Citgo, together with the organization Citizen’s Energy, will provide about 460,000 energy efficient light bulbs to low-income households throughout the U.S., according to Citgo’s CEO Alejandro Granado.

The announcement was made in Washington D.C. yesterday in the home of one of the beneficiaries of the program, together with Venezuela’s Ambassador to the U.S., Bernardo Alvarez, and Citizen’s Energy Chairman Joe Kennedy, II. Another launch will be held tomorrow in Houston, also in the home of a program beneficiary.

The U.S. project will start as a pilot program in communities that already receive discounted heating oil from Citgo throughout the U.S. Communities in the energy-saving light bulb pilot project include Washington, D.C.; Houston and Corpus Christi, Texas; Lamont, Illinois; and Lake Charles, Louisiana, where Citgo refineries operate. It will also be implemented in low-income communities in Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, Milwaukee, Madison, and Minneapolis.


Working with local community groups, the program will distribute light bulbs and energy conservation educational materials to approximately 23,000 households in the pilot cities. Qualified participants will participate in energy workshops sponsored by partner organizations.

In total, the pilot program has the potential to save participants nearly $15 million and reduce their energy use by 165 million kilowatt-hours. The average household will receive about 20 compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

I am opposed to this not because of Chavez, but more because of the CFLs.  There is just too many questions about mercury content in the new bulbs (please see previous posts on the bulbs).