Mar 29 2010
1999: A Hard Time for Milwaukee Kids
The year 1999 saw difficult times for families and especially children in Milwaukee county. With money problems plaguing society at the time, countless families were split between deciding on selecting Milwaukee Chapter 7 or Milwaukee Debt Settlement plan to cope up with their financial problems. In spite of the best effort of employed families in the county, many of them had salaries under the poverty line. This fact is in accord with Wisconsin state tax returns. According to a census carried out that year, the calculated figure of children living in such families was found nearing 59,100. There existed another spectrum of so called “Near poverty” families who were employed with a salary of approximately 105-185% above the recognized poverty level. The census showed that another startling figure of 53,800 children were observed to live in those families.
Further Studying the records, it shows another interesting finding. In the “extreme poverty” range, the figure of children of employed families was seen to decline. At the similar stage this figure was rising in the “Near Poverty” spectrum. The decline and increase were 3% and 6% respectively. The complication with families facing the criteria of “Near Poverty” is that they are less probabale to get public care for their children and enjoy food stamps or medical insurance, for which amenities they are highly eligible.
In 1998, income tax credits which were earned by the state helped out about 52,081 families taking 16,800 county youngsters out of the poverty range. But these declare rates declined in 1999 and eligible families with credits approaching 5,731 dollars could not claim their share. In 1998, a heavy sum of about 27 million dollars in federal and tax credits of the state remained unclaimed. On the plus side, the number of working families had increased from 1993 to 1999. Unfortunately such increment did not benefit the children much and the figure of children being served properly estimated to be 28,000 lower than the number in 1993.
Families comprising only a father or a mother dominated the statistics. Their figure had neared 49% of all families living in the county. Putting it in layman terms, one of every three single-parent-families in the employment spectrum had wages below the poverty line by 185%! These grim numbers readily speak for themselves. You can suppose the kind of misery the children living in this county must be going through.
There is a silver lining to each cloud. The state of Wisconsin has taken notice of such numbers and has been working to improve the lifestyle of the hard pressed kids residing there. A fine example to illustrate this is the existence of three medical insurance schedules accessible to children dwelling in households of low earning. Medicaid (MA) has been made accessible to families meeting the criteria of eligibility defined in July 1996. Another program named Healthy Start, helps by providing medical coverage for the families that have expecting women or children aged 6 years. A Badger Care Program is for uninsured families failing to qualify to the above.
Connor R. Sullivan recently researched Milwaukee chapter 7 files for an article he is writing on the subject. He checked the Milwaukee debt settlement records for his sister.