Category: Poverty & income gap
-
The Tricky Issue of Bad Debt and For-Profit Colleges
by James A. Bacon State higher education officials are scrambling to deal with the fallout if a federal agency votes to terminate the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), an accrediting agency for for-profit colleges. ACICS-accredited institutions, which include Stratford University and the Bon Secours and Sentara nursing schools, among others, enroll 9,000 students in…
-
Virginia Welfare Trends
I came across some interesting data on the Virginia Department of Social Services website showing the number of Virginians receiving social welfare benefits. I offer the data without commentary. — JAB
-
Make It Easier for Physicians to Donate Medical Care
August “Augie” Wallmeyer, a long-time lobbyist and member of Virginia’s political class, decided in his semi-retirement years to tour the state, with special attention to rural regions that are largely unknown to those who dwell in Virginia major metropolitan areas. In compiling material for his soon-to-be-published book, “The Extremes of Virginia,” he says, he’d “met…
-
Highlighting the Higher Ed Dropout Factories
by James A. Bacon The affordability crisis for American four-year colleges and universities is in part a problem of high tuition and fees, but it’s also a problem of low graduation rates, contends a new study by Third Way, a centrist think tank. “A typical four-year public college graduates only 48.3% of first-time, full-time students…
-
The Cooter Controversy as Window into the New Class/Culture War
by James A. Bacon Ben Jones, the former actor and Georgia congressman, has built a small retail empire around the character Cooter he played in the “Dukes of Hazzard” television series. In addition to his Cooter’s store in Rappahannock County, Va., he has opened stores in Nashville and Gatlinburg, Tenn. But Jones has to contend with a…
-
A Free Market Alternative to Payday Lenders
by James A. Bacon Most everyone recognizes that payday lenders create a poverty trap for poor and working class Virginians. While the lenders do provide a valuable service by extending short-term loans for emergency situations, the annualized interest rates are extremely high, and borrowers often find themselves rolling over their loans from month to month…
-
Virginia Court Fines in 2015: $429 Million
by James A. Bacon The Legal Aid Justice Center contends that Virginia courts are perpetuating a cycle of poverty by fining people, charging them court costs, and suspending their driver’s licenses. When people lose their licenses, they find it harder to get to work. Many lose their jobs, making it impossible to pay the fines.…
-
Map of the Day: Decline in Teen Birth Rate
The fertility rate for U.S. women reached an all-time low in 2015. All told, there have been 3.4 million fewer births since 2007 than would have occurred had fertility rates not declined, writes Hamilton Lombard in the StatChat blog. There are reasons to be concerned. Fewer births means fewer Americans entering the workforce, fewer workers paying…
-
Can Atlanta’s East Lake Experiment Work in Virginia?
by James A. Bacon It is axiomatic among social scientists that concentrating poor people in public housing projects accentuates the social pathologies that make poverty self-perpetuating and unbearable. The oft-touted solution is to create more mixed-income neighborhoods that de-concentrate poverty. Presumably, the presence of working- and middle-class households people would moderate the anti-social behavior of the…
-
War on the Poor Update: the Attack on Payday Lending
by James A. Bacon Once again the war drums are pounding as do-gooders unleash a wave of publicity against payday lending. A local case in point is a guest column in the Virginian-Pilot under the name of Debra Grant, who told her personal story. This is how it started: I had a relative who needed to borrow $150,…
-
Will More Money Really Help Poor Students?
by James A. Bacon Once upon a time, the liberal critique of Virginia’s school funding system was that schools with rich kids got more money per student than schools with poor kids. The state of Virginia moved to address funding inequalities two-and-a-half decades ago. Now liberals have raised the bar. It’s not enough to provide equal resources. Now…
-
Is There Really a Problem Here?
by James A. Bacon A new report by the Pew Research Center, “The Geography of America’s Shrinking Middle Class,” has garnered widespread attention by focusing on the erosion of America’s “middle class” between 2000 and 2014, confirming the dominant narrative of increasing income inequality across the United States. As a summary of the report emphasizes, “The…
-
“Coming Apart” — Virginia Edition
by James A. Bacon Three years ago sociologist Charles Murray wrote a book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” in which he described the social disintegration of lower-income and working-class whites in the United States. He documented the decline of marriage, the rise of out-of-wedlock births, the spread of substance abuse, and deterioration of work…
-
Polite but Restrained Applause for UVa’s Scaled-Back Tuition Hike
by James A. Bacon Let’s give a polite golf clap to the University of Virginia. After getting a $3 million boost in state support in the new FY 2017 budget, the Board of Trustees has scaled back its planned 3% tuition increase for continuing in-state students to 1.5%, reports the Daily Progress. The planned 10%…
-
How Many Millions Have Died from This Failed Scientific Orthodoxy?
One of the most rigorous scientific experiments on the effects of fatty foods in the diet took some 40 years to complete, but the results are now in. Reports the Washington Post: Collectively, the fuller results undermine the conventional wisdom regarding dietary fat that has persisted for decades and is currently enshrined in influential publications…