Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 10, 1994 TAG: 9403100180
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JONATHAN EIG DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Lottery tickets sit at the front of the counter. Condoms and cigarettes line the back wall. In between stands Barbara Simmons, eating a microwaved macaroni-and-cheese dinner.
Simmons, 29, works full time at a convenience store in Grand Prairie, Texas, in a working-class neighborhood of small houses and big, government-subsidized apartments.
She makes $5.20 an hour and takes home about $175 a week. She's proud to be off welfare, but not at all certain whether her life has improved because of it. With no car, no health insurance and no child care for her 8-year-old son, she remains firmly planted in poverty.
``I was born here, and I feel like I'll be working until the day I die, just like every other American,'' she said. ``But it doesn't pay.''
In fact, many economists say, work in America has not paid so poorly for the low-skilled since World War II. More than 30 million people such as Simmons live in homes where paychecks and poverty go hand in hand. The working poor answer phones, count change and file computer data in a service-oriented economy that pays its lowest-ranking members wages that have failed to keep pace with inflation.
Three of every four workers without college degrees watched their wages fall sharply between 1979 and 1991. More than 9.4 million working Americans fail to clear the poverty line, $14,279 for a family of four.
As the slump continues into its third decade, some scholars have begun writing an obituary on the American Dream. Not since the Great Depression, they say, has the economy offered less hope for the little guy.
``The American Dream isn't just a dream, it's a concept of justice,'' said John Schwartz, author of ``The Forgotten Americans'' and a political science professor at the University of Arizona. ``If you work hard enough, if you're responsible, you should be able to make a decent living in this country. That's justice, that's not just a dream. If that dream isn't true, it means we're not operating as a just country any more.''
Some experts contend that low-skilled workers always have struggled in America and always will. Even while acknowledging that wages are slumping and the gap between the rich and poor is growing, these scholars contend that America's economic future is bright.
Dr. Richard B. McKenzie, author of ``What Went Right in the 1980s,'' concedes that not much went right for the unskilled and poorly educated, who saw their earnings fall dramatically in the past decade. But McKenzie sees the computer industry as a new economic frontier filled with opportunity for the poor.
``I see the world as one of expanding opportunities for low-income people,'' said McKenzie, a professor of enterprise and society at the University of California at Irvine. ``But it's going to be a dreadful world for the people who don't heed this advice: Be responsible for yourself, find your own solutions.''
President Clinton says any American willing to work full time should be able to support a family. His administration has increased tax incentives for the working poor and is considering welfare reform, health-care reform and increases in the minimum wage to help low-paid workers.
A private economic research organization reported Wednesday that a recent increase in the minimum wage benefited middle-class families much more than poor families,
In 1991, the minimum wage was increased from $3.80 to $4.25 an hour. Households earning at least three times the poverty level received three times as much additional income from that increase as households below the poverty line, the Employment Policies Institute found.
The institute, a nonprofit organization that researches ways to expand employment opportunities, found that the minimum-wage increase did not affect the poverty rates of the groups it studied. It examined the effects of the increase on youths aged 16 to 20, young adults aged 20 to 26, and junior high school dropouts with 10 years of education or less.
`'An administration task force on welfare reform proposes to cut off benefits to young adults after two years and force them to work - including in subsidized jobs if no private positions are available.
The purpose of the proposed ``disincentives'' for remaining in the subsidized jobs, administration officials said Wednesday, would be to discourage extended participation in costly programs designed as temporary, last-resort solutions to unemployment for people coming off welfare.
Labor Secretary Robert Reich wants to spend $1 billion to retrain unemployed and underemployed Americans to take advantage of the nation's coming economic growth.
But while the debates and policy proposals flourish, a generation of Americans continues working with little hope of reward.
Economists and sociologists say the working poor come in every color and ethnicity, in both sexes, in rural areas and in cities.
``If I really thought about it,'' Simmons said, ``I'd be one depressed woman. I'm losing time with my kid when he desperately needs me. And for what? I'm not getting ahead.''
After six years on welfare, Simmons wanted more money and felt her son, Tommy, was old enough to be home by himself after school. It helped, she said, that she was able to get a job across the street from her apartment. Still, she said, she knows the boy would be better off if she were home with him. ``Arrest me, I'm neglecting my son,'' Simmons said with no trace of a smile. ``But I'm trying to put clothes on his back, too.''.
Though Simmons has a GED and might qualify for a better-paying job, she has no car to get to work. Even if she did get a car and a better job, new expenses would arise: gas, repairs, insurance, baby sitters. Also, too much income would make Simmons ineligible for subsidized housing and food stamps.
``There's always a light at the end of the tunnel,'' Simmons said. ''I just don't know when it's going to be there.''
Nor does Daniel Hamermesh, professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin and an expert on labor economics.
Hamermesh said economists were almost ready to announce an improvement in conditions for the working poor. In 1989, 1990 and 1991, the gap between the rich and poor in the United States began to shrink for the first time since the early 1970s. But in 1992, the trend reversed, wiping out three years of gains.
With foreign countries producing goods cheaper than the United States, companies here have been forced to improve their technology and cut jobs. When companies do hire, often they take on temporary and part-time employees. Many of the lost manufacturing jobs have been replaced by service industry positions, where wages tend to start low and stay low. Also, many of the new jobs created in the past decade have been part time.
As a result of those factors, Hamermesh said, inequality in the American work force hasn't been so bad since 1949.
Regardless of what happens to the minimum wage, said Gary Burtless, a labor economist at the Brookings Institute, low-wage U.S. workers need more training.
``In the late 1960s, we believed life would continue to get better, wages would continue to go up every year and living standards would go up,'' Burtless said. ``Lower-income families were becoming better off just as fast as everybody else.
``Now you're talking about a guy bringing home a paycheck worth 25 percent less than the same guy brought home in the early 1970s. That's a hell of a loss in living standards. I think we're talking about a real social calamity.''
``I'm working, and we're getting by,'' Simmons said. ``But I want more. To me, the American Dream is not like I was raised up to believe where Dad goes out and makes the money and Mom stays home and raises the kids and you go away once a year somewhere far away on vacation and you spend $1,000.
``I want to buy a home of my own, a home I can leave to my child when I die ... .
``I'm never going to do all that.''
by CNB