Report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas:
Concentrated Poverty in the Eleventh District
Last July, the Dallas Fed hosted a policy forum that aimed to raise awareness and stimulate dialogue about concentrated poverty. Paul A. Jargowsky of the University of Texas at Dallas gave a national perspective on what it is, where it is and why it exists. Marcus Martin of the Foundation for Community Empowerment narrowed the focus to economic and social disparities in Dallas.

The November 2006 issue of Banking and Community Perspectives (published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas)analyzes the dynamics of concentrated poverty in rural and urban settings. With data and insights from Jargowsky, Martin, local leaders and others, it illustrates concentrated poverty in two communities in the Eleventh Federal Reserve District—Hidalgo County’s Delta Region and South Dallas. While these communities are 500 miles apart, at opposite ends of the state, their lack of opportunity and prosperity gives them more in common with each other than with the nearby commercial centers of McAllen and Dallas.

The report may be viewed and downloaded at the Dallas Fed’s website: www.dallasfed.org

Paycheck to Paycheck: Online Tool for Case Managers and Grant Writers
The Center for Housing Policy has an online, interactive database Paycheck to Paycheck, that offers current wage information for more than 60 occupations and home prices and rents for nearly 200 metropolitan areas. Paycheck to Paycheck utilizes consistent measures of wages and housing costs so you can:

• See how workers in your metropolitan area are faring in the housing market;
• View the big picture for housing affordability for working families in various occupations across the country; and
• Use these analyses as a template to examine wages and housing costs in neighborhoods in your community.

Ten Texas Cities are included in this tool: Amarillo, Austin, Beaumont, Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. The tool is available at www.nhc.org under the Paycheck to Paycheck Interactive Database link.

Family Resource Simulator: Another Online Tool for Case Managers
The Family Resource Simulator (FRS) is a state-specific calculator that can help determine what salary and mainstream resources will be required to help low-wage workers make ends meet. It also provides a tool to illustrate how state and federal policies interact and affect low- to moderate-income families. The FRS demonstrates challenges low wage workers often face as their earnings increase – and their benefits are cut, which often means that the more money they make, the harder it is to make ends meet and become self- sufficient.

The Family Resource Simulator can:

• Indicate how much parents need to earn to cover a basic family budget.
• Calculate the benefits such as child care, food stamps, public health insurance, Section 8 vouchers, TANF.
• Show what happens to family resources when earnings aren’t enough: what resources are available at what income levels.
• Show the perverse effect of public benefits policies on families’ economic security -- how family budgets are affected as their incomes increase and they lose their work supports.
• Illustrate how well state policies encourage and reward employment.
• Demonstrate the potential consequences of cuts in public benefits.

The FRS calculates resources and expenses for a hypothetical family that the user (case manager) “creates” by making a series of choices about city and state, family characteristics, income sources, assets, and debts. The user also selects which public benefits the family receives when eligible and decides what happens when the family loses benefits (e.g., does the family seek cheaper child care after losing a subsidy?).

The Family Resource Simulator can be found at the National Center for Children in Poverty website at www.nccp.org.