Why is the poverty level dropping when the gap between how much it costs to live and how much families earn is actually growing? Workers across the United States are experiencing income insufficiency—the phenomena of working for a wage that doesn't pay enough to cover basic needs but earning too much to be eligible for social support programs. They work in some of our most crucial jobs – keeping us safe as security guards, caring for loved ones as Home Aids, helping us with our bags at the grocery store – but their struggles have been rendered invisible by the Federal Poverty Measure.

A new measure from the United Way ALICE (Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed) project shines some much needed light on the problem, finding that a whopping 43% of American households aren’t making it in today’s economy, triple the federal poverty rate. These households are in every U.S. county and include every gender, race, ethnicity, and age. Join us as we talk with ALICE Project Director Dr. Stephanie Hoopes and staunch ALICE advocate Karen Perham-Lippman, Deputy Commissioner in Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection, to help us learn about how families are getting by, and what we can do about it.

Related SP2 Faculty

Dr. Bobbie Iversen: https://www.sp2.upenn.edu/people/view/roberta-iversen/

Other Resources

The ALICE website: unitedwayalice.org

See if you can make it on ALICE’s wages: http://www.makingtoughchoices.org

Philadelphia’s Fair work week legislation:http://www.phillytrib.com/news/fair-work-week-bill-continues-to-wind-through-city-council/article_6bdc82a1-fba5-5035-9a5d-49ea6baf4e6c.html

National Center for Children in Poverty: http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_892.html

The Spread of GoFundMe: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/07/02/health-care-gofundme-crowdfunding-doctor-bills-minn)

“Scarcity" by Sendhil Mullainathan: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/scarcity-sendhil-mullainathan/1114258421

Giving money to every American - no strings attached - sounds like a parody of liberal governance. But the policy, once proposed by Richard Nixon and suggested by colonial pamphleteer Thomas Paine, is gaining traction among a unique coalition of thought leaders, Silicon Valley executives, and politicians from across the ideological spectrum. This concept, known as the Universal Basic Income or UBI, is seen as a possible answer to a range of pressing policy conundrums: financial instability, a coming wave of unemployment driven by automation, and climate change spurred by greenhouse gas emissions.

Many have raised concerns about the potential consequences, particularly whether this could cause an exodus from the labor market while simultaneously bankrupting the government. Luckily, the UBI is not new, and we have decades of data to guide our understanding of what to expect from a large-scale UBI. Here in the United States two large programs have been operating for decades: Alaska’s Permanent Fund, funded by fees paid by oil and mining companies, has paid a dividend to every Alaskan since the early 1980s, and the Eastern Band of Cherokees have paid tribe members a share of profits from its casino since the 1990s.

On this episode of Bending the Arc, we speak with Hawaii Representative Chris Lee, who sponsored a resolution to explore the UBI in his home state, to understand the grassroots support and enthusiasm, and Dr. Ioana Marinescu, Assistant Professor at Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice and a recognized expert on the topic, to learn what history tells us and how the UBI can be an effective policy tool.

Guests

Rep. Christopher Lee

Dr. Ioana Marinescu

Other Resources to Learn about the UBI

Hawaii’s Resolution to Explore the UBI

No Strings Attached: The Behavioral Effects of U.S. Unconditional Cash Transfer Programs

The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends

The Stockton, CA Experiment led by SP2’s Dr. Amy Castro Baker

Episode 5: From Selfies to Social Justice

“Technology is best when it brings people together,” Matt Mullenweg, a founder of WordPress, wrote several years ago. As the reach of mobile devices continues to grow, non-profit organizations have recognized the utility of tech as useful tool in the pursuit of social justice.

In this episode, we take a closer look at how technology – with a particular eye toward mobile devices - is being used for social good through a case study of Youth Matters Philly, an online resource bank designed to address youth homelessness by forging connections between young people and social services in Philadelphia. We speak with two women instrumental in its creation – Marcía Hopkins of the Juvenile Law Center and Dr. Johanna Greeson – in order to learn how professional expertise, youth centered design, and interagency collaboration led to a unique solution to an entrenched problem.

Learn More About How Tech is being Harnessed for Good

Youth Matters Philly: https://www.youthmattersphilly.org/

SP2 Expert

Johanna Greeson

Youth Matters Philly Team

Juvenile Law Center:

Hack4Impact

Youth Fostering Change

Other Resources to Learn More & Get Involved

Youth Matters Philly Launch Video

Street Change

Crisis Text Line

CHOP Policy Lab: Internet & Social Media Use Among Youth Experiencing Homelessness

Pew Research Center: Mobile Fact Sheet

Juvenile Law Center Donate Page

Women who experience abuse are five times more likely to be killed if their partner has access to a gun. However, a gun never needs to be fired to entrap and terrorize a victim of intimate partner violence. On this episode we look at the relationship between firearms, domestic violence, and coercive control—a form of relationship abuse in which a woman is threatened, surveilled, and degraded by her male intimate partner. We speak to Dr. Susan B. Sorenson about her research on non-fatal gun use, coercive control, and how policy change can help keep guns out of the hands of abusers. Listen to learn more about how guns impact women’s lives, not just their deaths.

SP2 Expert:

Susan Sorenson

https://www.sp2.upenn.edu/people/view/susan-b-sorenson/

Other Resources to Learn More & Find Ways to Get Involved:

Philadelphia Domestic Violence Hotline (PDVH)

1-866-723-3014

National Domestic Violence Hotline

1-800-799-7233

National Domestic Violence Chatline

Thehotline.org

Ortner Center on Violence and Abuse in Relationships

http://ortnercenter.org

The Cycle of Abuse and Why It’s So Difficult to Leave http://www.womenagainstabuse.org/education-resources/learn-about-abuse/why-its-so-difficult-to-leave

“Understanding Coercive Control with Professor Evan Stark” from

Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RCEQpIot34&t=156s

VAWA Reauthorization Bill

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6545/

Domestic Violence and Firearms: Sate and federal laws from Giffords Law Center

http://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/who-can-have-a-gun/domestic-violence-firearms/

Lutheran Settlement House (Part of the PDVH)

https://www.lutheransettlement.org/bdvp/

Congreso (Part of the PDVH)

http://www.congreso.net/services/health-promotion-and-wellness/domestic-violence/

Women in Transition (Part of the PDVH)

http://www.helpwomen.org

We delve into a topic largely ignored - domestic sex trafficking in the United States. We talk with experts and advocates who explain the startling stats and life experiences of sex trafficking victims, along with what we, as a country, are doing to fix it.

At the March for Our Lives, 17-year-old South Los Angeles native Edna Chavez shared her experience of growing up surrounded by violence. “I learned how to duck from bullets before I learned how to read!” she told the crowd of protestors. While FBI crime statistics for 2016 suggest violent crime is on the rise, a closer read reveals that the type of endemic violence that Edna spoke of is both hyper-localized and long-lasting, suggesting that current policy is missing the mark.

To broaden our thinking and help us understand what we’re missing, we turn to Dr. Kalen Flynn, a triple alumnus of Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice and a new Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She applies her groundbreaking research on violence to old human development models, allowing us to see how words, biases, and punitive and discriminatory policy and funding models are, themselves, types of violence we too often ignore.

Welcome to Bending the Arc, the new podcast from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy & Practice. We’ll talk about issues in which the moral universe just doesn’t seem to be bending toward justice quite quickly enough, and we’ll highlight the people helping it get there.

You’ll hear from people that are most affected and vulnerable to societal injustices and, those working tirelessly to help them – researchers, policymakers, advocates, social workers. We’ll pair a critical lens on our present with one peering into a more just future.

More than 1.5 million men, women, and children are homeless every year. They move into shelter at their most vulnerable moments, but are sometimes met by new neighbors who fear that with them comes violence, drug use, worse schools, and lower property values. We dig into the research to see if this holds true (spoiler alert, it doesn’t) and we’ll hear from three people with unique perspectives on homeless shelters to hear how homeless families impact a community, and how the community impacts them.