| Releases & Statements
For Immediate Release: May 19, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
The Other Mothers
By BETSY GOTBAUM and NANCY RANKIN
Published: May 14, 2006
MUCH has been written
recently about highly educated women choosing to take time out
from their careers to raise a family. Unfortunately, little attention
has been given to the challenges facing women at the opposite
end of the pay scale.
In New York City, the labor force
participation rate for single mothers with no more than a high
school education rose to 57.8 percent last year from 40 percent
in 1996. For these women, opting out is not possible, but the
strains they face are huge.
A recent survey by the Community Service
Society, a nonprofit group that fights poverty, found that among
low-income working mothers living on less than $32,000 for a family
of three, more than half were not entitled to even a single day
of paid sick leave; 61 percent did not have paid vacation; and
80 percent did not receive any employee health benefits for themselves
or their children.
While Medicaid filled the gap for
some, 37 percent of these low-wage mothers had to forgo necessary
medical care in the past year. A third had their electricity or
phone turned off because they could not pay the bills. Forty-three
percent had to rely on food pantries, and 42 percent fell behind
in their rent.
Faced with the struggle to make ends
meet, a low-wage mother can rarely stay home with a sick child
or recover from her own illness when it means losing a day's pay,
or worse, jeopardizing her job.
Subsidized child care, including after-school
and summer programs, would ease the burden on low-income working
mothers, but they also need health insurance and more time and
income to care for their families.
New York City and those of us who
work against poverty should do more to help people take advantage
of existing benefits, like food stamps and the earned income tax
credit. Studies show that more than 700,000 eligible New Yorkers
are still not receiving food stamps. Moreover, the working poor
are the least likely to obtain benefits because they cannot afford
to take time off from their jobs to apply. Outreach campaigns
and online applications, which the city has promised using federal
money, would be a huge help.
Washington should also increase basic
employee benefits to fit the realities of today's single-parent
and two-working-parent families. Senator Edward Kennedy's proposed
Healthy Families Act would guarantee seven days paid sick leave
to full-time workers and prorated benefits for part-time employees.
New York State should follow the lead
set by California, which in 2004 became the first state to provide
comprehensive paid family leave, and extend the temporary disability
insurance system to provide paid leave to care for a new child,
one's own serious illness or that of a family member. Actuarial
estimates show that the state could provide this benefit for its
working families for a cost of only 27 cents a week per employee.
The citywide survey by the Community Service Society found that
73 percent of New Yorkers would be willing to pay for it.
Health insurance is more difficult.
Lawmakers in Albany are pushing proposals to force large employers
to provide better health benefits, similar to the so-called Wal-Mart
law recently enacted in Maryland. While such laws would help many
workers, they do little for the majority of low-wage mothers who
are employed by small companies. Seven out of 10 of the low-income
working mothers surveyed by the Community Service Society worked
for firms with fewer than 50 employees.
In the short run, New York City and
the state should simplify enrollment in programs like Medicaid
and Child and Family Health Plus and pursue efforts to provide
low-cost plans to small businesses. For example, the Brooklyn
Chamber of Commerce has partnered with local insurance providers
to bring down the cost of health insurance for small businesses.
This program could be expanded citywide. New York should also
watch what happens in Massachusetts, which has started a program
to bring health coverage to all its citizens through a mix of
incentives and requirements.
Ultimately, we need to think more
broadly about how to make work compatible with family responsibilities.
New ideas like seasonal job-sharing — pairing entry-level
mothers in need of extended summer breaks with young people in
school who need summer jobs — would solve two problems at
once.
A nation that promotes work as the
path out of poverty should make an effort to pave the road and
make the journey smoother.
Betsy Gotbaum is the public advocate
for New York City. Nancy Rankin is the director of research at
the Community Service Society and a co-editor of "Taking
Parenting Public: The Case for a New Social Movement."
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