
          The Reagan Impact On the South's Poor
          By Suitts, SteveSteve Suitts
          Vol. 4, No. 2, 1982, pp. 15-16
          
          More than three decades ago, after the country had climbed up from
the Deep Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt said that the South
was the "nation's number one economic problem." A few years
ago. facing a sluggish national economy, the president of Westinghouse
declared that the South is now "the number one economic opportunity
for business." The changes have been remarkable. In the last decade
the region experienced the most rapid economic activity in its
recorded history, and in population and gross income it exceeded the
nation's growth.
          Yet, other statistics tell us that Southerners remain the country's
poorest people and the poorest paid workers. Only in Texas among the
Southern_states does the per capita income equal the national
average. In Mississippi, per capita personal income is only 69 percent
of the nation's, and the average Alabamian has only three-fourths of
the income of the average American. In the Deep South, industrial jobs
pay only about 68 percent of the wages for the same jobs outside the
region.
          The incomes of Southern families, especially black families, remain
very limited. In 1976, in the census South, 25 percent of white
families earned less than $8,000, and one in three families earned
less than $10.000. Of the nearly three million black families in the
same region, 49 percent earned less than $8.000, and more than 60
percent earned less than $10,000. Nearly one in three of all black
families in the region were below the poverty level in 1976.
          As this distribution of income suggests, the heads of Southern
families--and most of them do work--are poorly paid, and black wage
earners are disproportionately concentrated in low-paying
jobs. Indeed, the gap between the incomes of black and white families
in the South remains comparable to that of 30 years ago, when the
region had legal segregation. For every dollar the white family earned
in 1950 in the nation, the black family earned 51 cents. In the South
in 1950, the black family had 56 cents for every dollar available to
the white family. By 1975 the income of black families had risen in
the region and the nation to 61 percent of white families' income. But
by 1980 black families" income in the South had dropped to nearer 57
percent of white income.
          Perhaps most disturbing, black males' income in 1950 was 58 percent
of white males' income. By 1975 black males' income had dropped to 57
percent of white male income, and in 1980 it was nearer 55
percent. Really not surprising, the 11 Southern_states remain the home
of one-third of the nation's poor and one-half of the nation's black
poor.
          Into this era of simultaneously accelerating economic activity and
sinking personal reward came Ronald Reagan, who interpreted his
victory margin of less than 5 percent as a "mandate" for major changes
in the role of the federal_government and the allocations of the
federal budget. These changes presume the existence of a wasteful,
bloated bureaucracy of excessive benefits to a huge lot of undeserving
and a small number of deserving, truly needy individuals. The reality
is very different.
          Though similar contrasts can be shown for housing, Medicaid and
employment training, a brief look at food stamps and Aid to Families
with Dependent Children (AFDC) shows how Reagan is cutting away our
promise to the poor before it began to be truly fulfilled.

          There are wide variations in the level of AFDC benefits for
families across the country, although the composition of the family
may be the same. For example, before Oct. 1,1981, the maximum monthly
benefit to a family of three with no additional income was only $96 in
Mississippi and $122 in Tennessee. In New_York it has been more than
$200.
          Even before October 1981, AFDC payments have been received by a
relatively small percentage of the South's population. Less than 7
percent of Mississippi's population received support from this
program, and in no other Southern state was the percentage as high. In
Texas, for example, only three percent of the state's population were
recipients of AFDC.
          When compared to the number of poor in the South today. these
statistics belie the notion that the welfare rolls. before the budget
cuts, included many who weren't needy. The numbers of poor among the
total population in most Southern_states were three or four times
larger than the numbers of those on AFDC. In Alabama, 16.4 percent of
the population was poor, while only 4.6 percent received welfare
benefits. In Mississippi, the 7 percent of the population on AF DC was
dwarfed by the 26 percent of the population in poverty.
          These comparisons add up to one important fact about the welfare
program that existed before Oct. 1, 1981: many more poor children in
the South were in families without AFDC support than with it. In
Florida, less than 40 percent of the children in poverty received
benefits from the government's major cash assistance program for the
poor. In the 11 Southern_states, only 3.5 percent of the population
receives cash assistance from AFDC while more than 10 percent of the
families within the South had incomes below 75 percent of the poverty
level.
          In the program which provides food stamps to the poor and the
poorly paid, the number of poor who have actually received benefits in
the South is considerably below the total poor population of the
region. At the beginning of 1980, nearly two out of five poor families
in the South did not receive anv food stamps.
          Benefits provided under the Food Stamp Program are determined
largely by the amount of money needed to obtain an adequate,
nutritional diet. A family of three in Arkansas receiving the maximum
AFDC payment of $161 before Oct. 1 could have received $160 in food
stamps. An AFDC mother in Arkansas probably spent more than $23 of her
AFDC payment on food, leaving less than $138 a month for rent,
utilities, transportation, clothing, and other essential expenses of
herself and two children.
          Life with both AFDC benefits and food stamps has been no easy ride
for the poor in the South. Combined benefits provided by AFDC and food
stamps were extremely low even before cutbacks. Few states provided
combined benefits equal to the official poverty level. As of May,
1981, nine states--all in the South--provided combined benefits which
were less than 65 percent of the poverty level.
          These numbers do not deny that programs aimed at reducing poverty
have been at times poorly administered or even ill-conceived. Much of
the government's efforts in the area have probably been
ineffective. Nonetheless, the national government's commitment to
ending poverty has not been what it is portrayed to be by this
Administration. By no analysis can the programs in the South be shown
as overly generous to the unneedy.
          Yet the truly needy of the South are being abandoned by the present
and anticipated policies of the national government. This
Administration has offered nothing that signals an attempt to rethink
any misjudgments of the last 15 years in the war against poverty, nor
to redirect or reshape the government's role in helping poor citizens
become productive, tax-paying citizens. To date, this Administration
offers hardly more than a dedicated, official effort to remove any
form of government aid from the poor. While appeals to volunteerism
and the magic of the private sector are presented as alternatives,
cold facts suggest that the national government has now transformed
the war on poverty of 15 years ago to a war on the I poor today. If
this effort continues, the South's poor--both those who now work and
those who do not--shall face a future of crippled opportunities and
the nation will have surrendered the truest, most selfless element of
the American character.
          
            Steve Suitts is the executive director of the Southern
Regional Council. This article is adapted from remarks at the Southern
Labor Institute in December.
          
        
