Jacobs: EITC needed to fight poverty

Gilda Jacobs, former state senator and now president of the Michigan League for Human Services, had an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press over the weekend with some eye-opening numbers on poverty in the state of Michigan.

Along with some good news — we’ve made progress as a state in reducing dropout rates, for example — the annual child well-being report foreshadows trouble ahead. Child poverty in Michigan has risen a frightening 60% since 2000 with more than one in every five kids living below the poverty line (a mere $17,000 or less for a year for a family of three). Worse, poverty is higher for children of color — nearly one in every two African American and one in three Hispanic children live in poverty.

Poverty has lifelong consequences, and the longer children are in poverty, the deeper the impact. For example, a recent study shows that adults who spend one to three years in poverty as children were more than twice as likely to drop out of high school…

Child maltreatment is up 25% over the decade, too, and one federal study indicated that most of the cases are due to neglect. We know that neglect is often worsened by poverty.

Jacobs praises Gov. Rick Snyder for not calling for cuts to Medicaid in his proposed budget, but she also notes that his plan to eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit will put at least 14,000 more Michigan children below the poverty line and his plan to eliminate the child tax credit will push many more families into poverty — all to pay for a $1.8 billion cut in business taxes.

“Making working poor families living in poverty pay income taxes while many businesses pay none,” Jacobs writes, “is not a good priority for Michigan.”