Report shows 41 percent of children live among ‘working poor’

The children can fall through holes in the state’s inadequate safety net program along with their guardians, the state comptroller’s Office of Research report showed. It says those in poverty tend to be less educated, and many jobs don’t pay them enough to earn a living.

Other factors affecting the poor are the cost of child care, the state sales tax and that Department of Human Services employees are overworked and underpaid, the report stated.

Also, families that begin earning more money can lose support services they still need when in low-wage jobs.

The 2004 poverty level annual income is defined as $15,670 for a family of three, or $18,850 for four people.

Several recommendations were included in the report, including one for more short-term, emergency assistance to help families through difficult times and keep them off long-term public assistance.

Linda O’Neal, head of the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, said the report was excellent.

“A major problem is that we have developed lowered expectations about what we can be for the future and what our children can achieve,” she said Monday, zeroing in on education. “If we could only do one thing, the one that would have the best payoff is to provide quality early childhood education for high-risk 4-year-olds.”

The report calls Tennessee’s tax structure “regressive” and says it “places a disproportionate burden on poor and low-income Tennesseans.”

Someone earning less than $14,000 pays 11.7 percent of their income in taxes — primarily sales tax— while a person making $269,000 or more pays about 3.4 percent in taxes, the report concludes. It recommends a tax credit or rebate on sales tax.

One anti-tax group disagreed with that suggestion, saying sales taxes should be lowered for everyone on all items.

“Rather than adding another government program and another level of complexity, a better idea would be to include in the tax base a lot of services that are not now taxed. That would lower the tax rate on food,” said Ben Cunningham, speaking for the Tennessee Tax Revolt.

The report also recommends more funding for at-risk children.

“Every dollar we spend on at-risk children can save $7 in avoiding undesirable outcomes like unnecessary special education, repeating grades, dropouts, teen pregnancy, juvenile delinquency and welfare dependency,” O’Neal said.

Education also is an issue for the rising number of immigrant families, the report stated.

“The bottom line for a lot of it is jobs and better-paying jobs,” O’Neal said. “We’ve got to have a better educated work force.”

Although poverty has fallen in Tennessee and the nation during the last two decade, 38 of the state’s 95 counties have poverty rates of more than 15.5 percent. That rate and the nation’s overall rate of 17 percent are higher than rates in Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy, the report showed.

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On the Net:

Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury: http://www.comptroller.state.tn.us/