How your county ranks for unwed births, pregnant teens and infant health

Fewer Michigan teenagers are having babies, and the state is seeing fewer premature births, according to a new report looking at health and birth trends.

But the Kids Count in Michigan Right Start report indicates that the number of babies born to unwed mothers has risen dramatically over the last decade, accounting for 41 percent of babies born between 2008 and 2010.

The report, released today by the Michigan League for Human Services' Kids Count in Michigan project, looks at eight maternal and infant health measures and ranks 81 of the state’s 83 counties.

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/04/report_fewer_michigan_teenager.html

Map the Meal Gap

What percentage of people or children in your county have food insecurity?

The following is a link to an interactive map which shows.  Click on Michigan and then click on your county to find out:

http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-studies/map-the-meal-gap.aspx

Michigan Book Discusses Limits of Education Reform

The mixed results of decades of education reform in Michigan prove there’s only so much policymakers can do to improve student performance, according to a new book by two school and policy researchers.


Using Michigan as a laboratory, authors Michael Addonizio and Philip Kearney dissect the impacts of reforms to school funding, accountability and choice and conclude “the crucial interaction between students and teachers is often unaffected by state or federal attempts at ‘remote control.’”


... Over its 260 pages that include notes and charts, “Education Reform and the Limits of Policy: Lessons from Michigan” also argues that lawmakers should remember supports to housing, health, income and other social services affect learning as students struggling with those issues at home also struggle in class.


http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20120427/NEWS01/304270027/Author-Education-reforms-overly-optimistic-

Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation Study: Investing in Quality Pre-Kindergaten Preparation Saves Michigan $100,000 per Child

For every Detroit child who enters kindergarten ready to learn, Michigan taxpayers save $100,000, according to a study that calculates the economic value of preparing children for long-term educational success starting at birth.

Detroit's One-Child School Readiness Dividend study, to be released at a news conference today, was commissioned by the Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation in partnership with more than 20 organizations.

The conclusions support prior research which showed evidence that children -- particularly low-income children -- who attend early education programs that prepare them are less likely to depend on taxpayer-funded services.

http://www.freep.com/article/20120425/NEWS01/204250395/Kindergarten-preparation-for-each-Detroit-tot-means-36-100-000-savings-for-Michigan-study-finds

Poverty In America "Threatens Our Very Democracy"

PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley said on "Face the Nation" Sunday that poverty in America "threatens our very democracy," and that it threatens our national security.

Smiley and Princeton Professor Cornel West, co-authors of the new book The Rich and the Rest of Us (Smiley Books), talked to host Bob Schieffer about how half of Americans - 150 million people - are poor, which they defined as living one or two paychecks away from poverty.

"There seems to be a bipartisan consensus in this town - and you know how hard that is to do - but a bipartisan consensus that the poor just don't matter, that poverty is just not an important issue," Smiley said. "We cannot abide another campaign for the White House where the issue of poverty isn't raised higher on the American agenda."

West said the face of poverty is changing. "We've got a significant number of white brothers and sisters," he said, including those who were formerly middle class. "The public face now [is] white, more and more white middle class."

Smiley said poverty is not color-coded: "This is not a black problem or a brown problem," he said. "This is a societal crisis right now."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57418553/cornel-west-and-tavis-smiley-poverty-in-america-threatens-democracy/

Poverty In America: Defining the New Poor

Welfare reform in 1990s helped slash cash benefit rolls, and yet the use of food stamps is soaring today. About 15 percent of Americans use food stamps, and it has become what some call the new welfare.

A big reason why is because of a deal struck between President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress in 1996. At that time, the number of Americans who received cash payments — what's often thought of as welfare — was at an all-time high.

The Clinton overhaul made it much harder to qualify for those payments, and today the welfare rolls are down 70 percent, but that's only if you define welfare in one way.

"We decided cash assistance is welfare and that's bad, but we decided food aid is nutritional assistance and that's good," says New York Times reporter Jason DeParle. "We made [the food stamp] program much easier to get on."

DeParle, who covers poverty for The Times, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that 18 million Americans have had to apply for food aid since the economic crisis began.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/22/151166529/poverty-in-america-defining-the-new-poor

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Meets With Kalamazoo Area Students

Hundreds of area students heard a message of how their individual actions can change the world Friday from a 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner who is in Kalamazoo this weekend for the annual PeaceJam program.

When Rigoberta Menchu Tum was young, her father was accused of being a part of a guerrilla organization in her home country of Guatemala and was arrested and tortured until he was eventually killed. Soon after, the army arrested her brother and tortured and killed him. Eventually, Menchu Tum's mother was imprisoned and repeatedly raped and tortured until she died in prison.


http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2012/04/nobel_peace_price_winner_speak.html#incart_hbx

More Diversity Needed in K-12 Classrooms and Administration Offices

Leslie Fenwick, Dean of College of Education at Howard University discusses at the National Urban League conference the need to diversify the body of America's teachers, principals, and superintendents:

Where fresh foods are scarce, so is good health: Scientific American

Even within the borders of one of the world’s top agricultural countries, healthy food can be hard to come by. Many Americans reside in food deserts—communities where retailers offering fresh food are scarce but fast-food restaurants and convenience stores selling prepared foods can abound...


Scientists are still exploring the links between food deserts and health by investigating how the nonavailability of fresh food may spur obesity, diabetes and other diet-related conditions. One 2006 study found an association between the presence of supermarkets and lower obesity rates. Convenience stores, on the other hand, were associated with higher rates.


(Note:  Click on the chart above for a larger more readable set of charts.)


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=high-and-dry-in-the-food

Living on Less Than $600 per Month

Reporter:  What are your dreams?

Young man:  Right now, I have none.

Hungry quietly try to get by with less

Hungry people generally don't announce themselves.

They form silent lines at food pantries. They pay quietly with Bridge cards. They do not like to tell their stories in public, which is why you have read so few of them.

Anna Calhoun, though, has gotten to the point where disbelief outweighs any sense of embarrassment. And as "Unity 2012" — a national summit of food banks — converges on Detroit today, she finds herself grappling with the latest in a sequence of setbacks she and her husband have faced since losing their jobs during Michigan's decade-long economic winter.

Last month, in one of the deaths from a thousand cuts she's experienced, Calhoun received a brief letter from the state, informing her that the $94 a month in food assistance the state had been providing was no more. Three months before that, the food assistance for her, her husband, her son and stepdaughter had been cut from $232 a month.

The caseworker couldn't explain the basis, but Calhoun got on a computer and looked up the code: As full-time students, the Calhouns no longer qualified for food assistance.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120417/OPINION03/204170371#ixzz1sJjgJU4C

Big Brothers Big Sisters in Calhoun County Holds Its Biggest Fund Raiser of the Year April 21

You’re never too old to make a difference in the life of a young person. That’s Richard Schlatter’s firm belief.


“I can’t rescue a hundred kids, but I can make a difference in the life of one,” said Schlatter, 67, a graphic design consultant who for several years ran Schlatter Design in Battle Creek.


Schlatter is busily helping to raise money for Big Brothers Big Sisters in Calhoun County through its Bowl for Kids’ Sake event this month.


A lot of money.


Schlatter and his “little brother,” David Smith, a 16-year-old student at Battle Creek Central High School, hope to get pledges worth $1,000.


The double event April 21 will be at 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. at M-66 Bowl, 19794 N.E. Capital Ave. The two fundraisers are among 15 Bowl for Kids’ Sake events that Big Brothers Big Sisters will hold this spring throughout the organization’s five-county region. It’s one of the agency’s biggest annual activities.


http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20120415/NEWS01/304130017/Helping-out-sometimes-means-thinking-big

Michigan's foreclosure activity down, but still 7th highest foreclosure rate in nation

Michigan’s foreclosure activity slowed in the first quarter of 2012, but the housing market still has a ways to go before fully recovering.

“The housing market has gotten through this really bad batch of loans that triggered the foreclosure crisis in the first place,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrack Inc., an Irvine, Calif.-based foreclosure data firm. “Many of those loans have been either modified or foreclosed on over the last five years in Michigan.”

There were 27,934 foreclosure-related filings in Michigan during the first three months of 2012...

http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2012/04/michigans_foreclosure_filings.html#incart_river_default

Welfare Limits Left Poor Adrift as Recession Hit

Perhaps no law in the past generation has drawn more praise than the drive to “end welfare as we know it,” which joined the late-’90s economic boom to send caseloads plunging, employment rates rising and officials of both parties hailing the virtues of tough love.


But the distress of the last four years has added a cautionary postscript: much as overlooked critics of the restrictions once warned, a program that built its reputation when times were good offered little help when jobs disappeared. Despite the worst economy in decades, the cash welfare rolls have barely budged...


The poor people who were dropped from cash assistance here, mostly single mothers, talk with surprising openness about the desperate, and sometimes illegal, ways they make ends meet. They have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners — all with children in tow.

www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/us/welfare-limits-left-poor-adrift-as-recession-hit.html

Struggling to survive after state cuts to assistance

Eleven thousand Michigan families were cut from welfare cash assistance late last year. Cash assistance is the $500 a month or so that helps the poorest families pay their bills and rent.  The Department of Human Services says the state can’t afford the cost.  So, the agency cut off those who’d been on welfare the longest. Advocates for the poor say there’s no need for those cuts… there’s plenty of federal money to pay for the benefits.

While the agency and advocates argue and maneuver in court, thousands of families are in trouble. Here's one family's story (as reported on Michigan Radio):

www.michiganradio.org/post/struggling-survive-after-state-cuts-assistance

The Poor Among You

They gather at dawn at day-labor centers or designated parking lots where contractors hire workers. Some stop on their way to pick up a cheap breakfast taco at a convenience store, buying their meal from an employee earning minimum wage. At the store, they wait in line with members of a crew purchasing gas for the mowers and trimmers they will use to cut the grass of other people's lawns.

They are the working poor—people who may work more hours a week than the average salaried employee, but they do it at a cobbled-together assortment of part-time jobs without benefits. Some find themselves trapped in the situation because they lack the education or technical skills to find a better job. Others lost salaried positions due to economic recession and are working part-time or temporary jobs to try to make ends meet.

Living in poverty

Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, sees that situation—coupled with the United States' deficit and a growing gap between the rich and poor—as a justice crisis.

"Minimum wage doesn't get a person even close to the poverty level. People ought to be able to work their way out of poverty," Sider, professor at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa., said in an interview.

But more Americans live in poverty today than at any time in more than 50 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

"The richest nation in human history now has the highest poverty level of any Western industrialized nation," Sider writes in his new book, Fixing the Moral Deficit:  A Balanced Way to Balance the Budget. 

www.bread.org/media/coverage/news/the-poor-among-you.html

RV Dwellers Constantly Forced to Relocate

Ea­ger to live in an upscale neighbor­hood with­out paying rent or buying a home, Re­my Mar­tin Foster said he hit on the per­fect solution: He bought an RV.

"Math­emat­ically it made the most sense," the un­employed 29-year-old said. "It was the best financial move I ev­er made. I started saving mon­ey im­me­diately."

Trou­ble is, living in a vehicle on public streets is il­le­gal. Ev­er since Foster began parking his camper on res­idential streets, first in Hollywood and then in the San Fernando Valley, the motor home dweller has been rousted from one spot to the next by annoyed neighbors and po­lice.

http://www.ongo.com/v/3928934/159/92671D2B12540B19/rv-dwellers-are-constantly-forced-to-relocate