Poverty in Louisiana

• By SARAH CHACKO
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Mar 15, 2009 - Page: 1&6A

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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.”

She mops the floor of her modest apartment and chides him when he runs in to raid the refrigerator for a snack before supper.

Smith heads one of Louisiana’s 150,000 families — roughly 15 percent of all families in the state — that the federal government’s 2007 statistics show live below the poverty level, which is $397 in weekly income for a family of four. Twenty-seven percent of Louisiana’s children live in poverty,  according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Numbers like those perpetually put Louisiana at the bottom of quality-of-life lists.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to raising the standard of living for children, recently reported that poverty and its associated factors, such as teenage pregnancies, low birth weights and school dropouts, make Louisiana the second-worst place for a child to live in the U.S.

Poverty hits the rest of Louisiana’s residents through the cost of government aid programs and by cutting the number of taxpayers who can contribute to state revenues.

Like most of the Louisiana families now living in poverty, the roots of Smith’s situation can be traced back generations, usually to a specific event, poverty experts say.

Groups that provide assistance to the poor classify families thrust into poverty by events, such as the collapse of the energy market in the mid-1980s, as suffering “situational poverty.”

The cycle of poor education, low-paying jobs and other factors that continues from one generation to the next is called “generational poverty.”

The key, many experts say, is keeping situational poverty from turning into a condition that lasts lifetimes.

Smith grew up in a poverty-stricken family with 10 children. She was a slow learner, quitting school after the eighth grade. She worked a series of low-paying, service industry jobs at Popeyes, Sonic, a daycare center and a security guard company.

The jobs usually lasted until business conditions changed.