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Friday, November 20, 2009
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HOT TOPICS
The Advocate: Poverty in Louisiana
| 2009-04-12 | |
| Louisiana last year spent nearly a third of its $29.5 billion budget on the poverty that afflicts at least a quarter of the state’s population. But it’s hard to know whether that $9.1 billion — spent through 90 programs under 13 different state offices — addressed any of the root causes of poverty or even relieved some of its effects. | |
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| Calculating the full cost of poverty is hard to do. Direct costs include government spending on food stamps, public housing and health care. Indirect costs include prison funding, lost taxes and higher private insurance premiums. | |
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| Parts of Louisiana suffer some of the highest poverty rates in the country — 150,000 of the state’s 1 million families are poor. The Advocate is exploring the costs, causes and effects of poverty. | |
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| 2009-03-15 | |
| A child whose first six years are spent at the poverty line and who is born with low birth weight is considerably less likely to graduate from high school “on time” than a child who was not born with low birth weight. | |
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| Ruby Smith of Baton Rouge says she isn’t looking for sympathy. What she wants is an education for her grandson. “I want to provide more for him than I had,” said the 47-year-old Smith. “I want to break that cycle.” | |
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