Poverty

DISD Focuses on Parents and Young Kids for Two-Generation Strategy to Reduce Poverty

In Dallas ISD, early childhood education has been a major push in the last year. It's a move that administrators believe could one day in the future lower soaring poverty rates in a district where free and reduced lunch rates have steadily creeped toward 90 percent in recent years, and nearly 87 per ... More >>

Americans for Prosperity Conference Wraps Up with a Heartfelt Kiss for the Free Market

I'm sitting next to a well-dressed home-schooled high schooler from just outside of Lafayette, Louisiana, watching failed Senate candidate and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina talking about the dignity of jobs that don't pay a living wage. Why Fiorina is speaking at Defending the American Dream isn't rea ... More >>

How the Mayor's Task Force Wants to Combat Poverty in Dallas

In February, Mayor Mike Rawlings created a task force to fight against what he calls Dallas' "barbell economy." Dallas is a wealthy city, experiencing 68 percent GDP growth between 2000 and 2012, but it is also a city with pockets of concentrated poverty that promote blight and toxic stress for resi ... More >>

It Really Sucks to Be a Kid In Texas

And we're not just talking about the unaccompanied Central American variety. A new report by the Center for Public Policy Priorities zeroes in on a national study ranking child well-being. Several factors come into play, including health care, education, parental employment, and standard of living. ... More >>

Dallas' Car Wash Story Is Really About Jobs, Prisons and the Future

One more selfie here: This week I have a story in the print newspaper about City Hall's efforts to shut down a car wash in a poor neighborhood. It's actually the second time in a year that photographer Mark Graham and I have worked on a story about Jim's (no relation) Car Wash on Martin Luther King ... More >>

Another Whiny Self-serving Essay About Teachers in the Morning News Sunday

On Sunday The Dallas Morning News printed an essay on its op-page by Austin writer John Savage about teaching in what he calls "the worst school in Texas." It's a piece that has been making the rounds from Salon to the blog of Diane Ravitch, a former champion of school reform who has become a bor ... More >>

Any Excuse for a Cape

Researchers Find North Texas Kids Have Higher Risks of Poverty, Food Instability, Mental Health Problems

A new report put out by the research advocacy group Children At Risk has compiled statistics to show that hundreds of thousands of North Texas children are living in poverty and facing food insecurity. The Future of North Texas' Children examines 10 topics affecting North Texas children, including ... More >>

The Number of Poor People in Dallas Suburbs Keeps Going Up

The suburbs stir up a lot of associations in the popular imagination. It covers territory as diverse as Leave It to Beaver and Blue Velvet. What the 'burbs don't usually evoke is poverty. For decades the war on poverty has been fought mostly in urban centers, but according to a new study out today f ... More >>

Kids In Texas Are Worse Off Than Those in Almost Every Other State, Report Says

Governor Rick Perry and the Republican leadership in Austin have made Texas a rhetorical model for the nation, an economic dynamo that has soared despite the federal government's meddling. Our obsession with low taxes, small government and a lean social safety net has led others call us the best sta ... More >>

The Defunding of Women's Health Care in Texas May Force Rural Clinics to Close

We keep hammering away at this same general point, but really: It's been a terrible year for family planning providers in Texas. First the Legislature moved $73.6 million out of the state family-planning budget for the next two years . At the same time, they changed to a tiered funding structure tha ... More >>

Rawlings: We Must "Take Notice" of High Number of Dallasites So Close to Asset Poverty

If you need a new benchmark to measure just how broke you are, try "asset poverty." Asset-poor households would be unable to survive for three months at the federal poverty level if some crisis caused them to lose their source of income. As Robert mentioned earlier, asset poverty is the subject of ... More >>

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Except For the 30 Percent of Dallas County Children Living Below the Poverty Line

​Shortly before Thanksgiving 2007, Timothy Bray and co-author Nathan Berg of the University of Texas at Dallas issued a report that hasn't aged a day since its initial publication: Access to Grocery Stores and Food Security in Dallas, which began the ongoing conversation concerning the so-called " ... More >>

New Anti-Poverty Coalition to Demand Dallas City Hall Zone Payday Lenders Out of Business

​Been trying to reach council member Jerry Allen ever since yesterday; no luck so far. But we know where he'll be at 3 today: in the Flag Room at Dallas City Hall, standing beside Dr. Frederick Haynes and Rev. Gerald Britt at an anti-payday lender press conference on behalf of the Anti-Poverty Coa ... More >>

Proof Positive

According to Census Bureau, 4,262,000 Texans Now Living Below the Poverty Line

​This morning, the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States report. And while some take issue with how the bureau calculates the poverty rate, the headline are more or less the same: "U.S. Poverty Rate Jumps To 14.3 Percent." The median natio ... More >>

The State of Texas Cannot Execute The Mentally Retarded, But That May Not Prevent A Dallas Cop Killer From Being Put To Death.

Doc About Jubilee Park to Premiere at Episcopal Church Conference This Week

​Daniel's on top of the Dallas Independent School District's efforts to pay pennies on the dollar to Jubilee Park residents and businesses in order to make way for a new O.M. Roberts Elementary School building. He hopes, before the day's out, to get some kind of response -- any kind of response -- ... More >>

You Think the Recession Blows? Well, Sure. But Try Living On One Dollar a Day.

"Andrea," who received $1,500 from the Chiapas Project to become a farmer in Mexico, where she support four generations of family​Sure, our economy's grim, but consider this: In Haiti, 80 percent of the population lives under the poverty line and two-thirds lack formal jobs. Altering such circumst ... More >>

Porcelain for the People

In Dallas, a Rise in Homelessness and Hunger Due to "Bleak" Economy

This morning, outside a rescue mission in Miami, the U.S. Conference of Mayors released a study concerning homelessness and hunger in 25 major cities, with Dallas among those participating in the survey. The section dealing specifically with the city can be found on Page 30 of the 85-page report, bu ... More >>

Don't Stand So Close To Sting: VIP Front Row Tickets Up For Bid

Message in a bloggle? Alright, Police fans, this is for you. Apparently it's next to impossible to get front row tickets at The Police's shows--the tickets aren't even open for purchase to the general public. But now, The Police, who are coming to town on May 21 to the Superpages.com Center, are of ... More >>

One Out of Four Texas Children Goes Hungry At Some Point During the Year

Twenty-four percent of all children in the state of Texas are "at risk of hunger," says a report released yesterday by America's Second Harvest, the country's largest charitable hunger-relief organization. The report's titled Child Food Insecurity in the United States: 2003 -- 2005, and it analyzes ... More >>

Wild and Woolly

They Know Jack

Work Book

Cohen delves into working America

Dolly Parton

Friday, December 3

Feed the Need

What is soup kitchen food like?

Just Get Married!

Bells will be ringing as a new pro-marriage, anti-poverty plan takes root in Texas

Make 'em pay

Dallas activists fight
for a living wage from city contractors

Nice try

A troubled Dallas anti-poverty agency's end-run around state regulators goes nowhere