Economic Opportunity and Anti-Poverty Programs

By one estimate, the federal government spent over $367 billion in 2005 alone on subsidizing Americans' retirement savings and tax breaks to build up other assets like buying a home.  Unfortunately, those subsidies go overwhelmingly to those Americans who already have high-incomes; almost none of it goes to the poorest Americans who need the most help building the financial assets that can lead to long-term economic opportunities and security.

States don't really know how many of their residents are poor.  The current federal poverty measure uses a forty-year old, widely criticized methodology.  It neither accounts for many of the resources poor families receive from the government, such as Food Stamps and the EITC, nor does it, conversely, factor in many additional expenses the poor face that are not accounted for in the federal measure, such as transportation costs, child care and local costs of living.