During the period of economic boom that the United States experienced during the 1990s, poverty was increasingly viewed as an individual problem of people who were somehow unwilling to enter the labor force. Unemployment was at record lows, yet longitudinal studies carried out in a number of states suggested that leaving welfare rolls did not mean leaving poverty (see http://www. legis.state.wi.us/lab/Reports/ 01-7report.pdf and www.wa.gov/workfirst).

The National Research Council of the American Academy of Sciences conducted an exhaustive review of the impact of welfare reform. Titled Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition (http://stills.nap.edu/books/0309072743/ html/), the review concludes that limitations in the collection and maintenance of data seriously affect the ability to fully evaluate the impact of welfare reform as a poverty reduction tool.

Reducing poverty is an important piece of rural development. The World Bank now defines poverty as more than simply low income. Poverty also includes lack of voice in determining what goes on in one’s community, state and nation, and insecurity in terms of livelihood (World Bank, 2001; http://www.worldbank.org/wbp/wdrpoverty/report/index.htm). While people in poverty may occasionally earn a decent wage, their jobs tend to be highly insecure, their living situations precarious and their health fragile.

Poverty Reduction and Community Development: Trickle Down or Full Integration?

Community development involves turning individual situations (shown in the bright green boxes) into community solutions (shown in the boxes outlined in black) that allow for community integration of members of households in poverty. Communities are stronger when those at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale have adequate income and secure livelihoods. Most people are fired or leave their jobs for one of the following three reasons:

• They do not arrive to work regularly and on time.
• They do not get along with fellow workers.
• They do not get along with their boss, particularly in terms of taking instruction on what needs to be done and how it needs to be done.

However, these are not all conditions of the individual but are also conditions of the workplace and the community. The workplace can be organized to help people arrive regularly and on time by providing a healthy and respectful work environment that motivates employees to be there. The workplace can be structured to minimize conflict among co-workers, and managers can learn to give instructions more clearly and show more respect to workers as they do so.

Local conditions are absolutely critical for poverty reduction. Communities need quality jobs that pay good wages, have benefits, and provide decent working conditions (Fletcher et al. 1999). Increasingly, studies are showing that youth and marginal workers not only get low wages and no benefits, but their working conditions are relatively hazardous in terms of both physical and mental pressures (Evensen et al. 2000).

Communities, through programs such as Business Retention and Expansion (http://www.brei.org/) can work with employers to help them become more efficient. This efficiency will allow them to pay higher wages, to arrange community-based options for access to health insurance programs to reduce costs to both employees and employers, and to help improve working conditions which in turn can improve productivity, allowing more profits for the business and higher wages for workers.

Quality jobs are embedded in communities; they are not necessarily a result of firms recruited from the outside. Community and economic development efforts that link employers within communities and across nearby communities that are both competing for employees and who understand that the success of one of the businesses helps ensure the success of the others is that ideal situation, sometimes referred to as “cooperatition.”

Thus, local economic development efforts that link firms with each other and provide appropriate technical assistance, including training for managers and employees, can lead to quality jobs. And quality jobs need quality workers. People who want to work and have the self-confidence to believe they can do it need education and training that fits the local job needs. Often community colleges and their branches are an excellent mechanism through which such training is provided. In addition, in many rural communities where there is an increasing in-migration of workers from other countries, English language skill programs are critical in helping people acquire appropriate skills.

Linking People to Jobs: It’s Not Automatic in Conditions of Poverty

Even quality jobs and appropriate skills are not enough to give people who are living in poverty the ability to arrive to work regularly and on time, to get along with fellow workers, and to take instruction. Some of the realities of poverty are that poor people often:

• Move a lot.
• Must care for their children.
• Do not have a car or their car breaks down a lot.
• Have illness and chronic conditions.
• Have low energy and are hungry.

One of the realities of poverty and the instability it brings with it is that poor people move a lot. There is a lack of affordable housing in many parts of the rural Midwest, and the housing that is affordable is often of very low quality with many people sharing a dwelling. Efforts by communities to make affordable housing available, often through creative private/public partnerships, provides a stability that impacts the conditions of poverty that helps link people with appropriate skills to quality jobs.

In addition, because poor people move a lot, the social networks that help more stable households meet childcare needs through friends and relatives are not in place. As parents move into the workforce, often someone else must care for the children. (However, in many homes below poverty level in the rural Midwest, both parents work different shifts in order to ensure that a parent cares for their children.) Community provision of childcare and elder care can help facilitate people with appropriate skills arriving regularly and on time to good jobs.

Another reality of poverty is unreliable transportation. People often do not own a vehicle and have to depend on the kindness of neighbors or even strangers. If they do have a car it is often very old and they may not be able to afford the maintenance it takes to keep it running. When the car breaks down, they cannot get to work on time. Thus community provision of transportation has proven extremely helpful in getting people with appropriate skills to quality jobs.

People who live in conditions of poverty are also more likely to have illness and chronic conditions, and less likely to have access to health care systems and health insurance. Community provision of health care through public clinics and mechanisms where employers can find less expensive ways to provide health insurance can greatly increase the ability of the worker to arrive regularly and on time, and increase the quality of their work once they are on the job.

Hunger is often a reality of poverty as well. Even with food stamps, which many eligible people in the rural Midwest do not apply for, there are times in the month where there is not enough food to go around. Low energy and hunger increases illness as well as decreases efficiency on the job. Communities can provide access to good food by simplifying mechanisms for access to food stamps and through food pantries.

Even with community institutions in place, one-on-one support is very important. Mentoring programs where friendships are formed between middle-class working adults and individuals who are emerging from poverty have been shown to be critical.

All of this takes organization and commitment of market, state and civil society at the local level. We need to realize that poverty is more than low-income and more than an individual situation. We also need to understand that decreasing poverty (using the three criteria defined by the World Bank) improves community vitality.

Poverty reduction can be seen as an important part of community development. Coordinated community activities that often meet the needs of middle-class people as well as households in poverty can increase income, decrease instability of livelihoods, and increase participation and voice—making communities better for everyone.

Cited references

Evensen, Christian T., Michael D. Schulman, Carol W. Runyan, Ronda C. Zakocs, and Kathleen A. Dunn. 2000. “The downside of adolescent employment: hazards and injuries among working teens in North Carolina.” Journal of Adolescence 23:5 (October) 545-560.

Fletcher, Cynthia Needles, Barbara J. Gaddis, Jan Flora, Hugh B. Hansen, Karen Shirer, Mary Winter, Jackie Litt, Nancy Norman and Connie Betterley. September 1999. Family Well-Being and Welfare Reform in Iowa: A Study of Income Support, Health, and Social Policies for Low-Income People in Iowa. EDC 141. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Extension.

World Bank. 2001. World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press.