A tool to address poverty
Commissioner David Jeffrey is national commander of The Salvation Army USA.Amir Pasic is dean at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Statistics about the health and wealth of Americans hold a vexing paradox. Steady signs of improvement are regularly reported on the news. Unemployment continues to decline. Consumer confidence is generally on the rise. The housing crisis appears to have stabilized. The price of oil has given many a freedom to go and do what has been absent in recent years.
As encouraging as many of the signs are, they also can be misleading. National averages, by their nature, obscure regional differences.
Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey once said, and the visit of Pope Francis recently reminded us, that “The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
As a nation, we are compelled not to overlook our most vulnerable citizens. To be fair, prevailing statistical tools such as the national unemployment and poverty rates have always made it difficult for policymakers to even know precisely where individual pockets of vulnerability exist.
But today, it is possible to see poverty in America with greater clarity and to do something about it.
A new, more-nuanced tool offers hope that policymakers and social services providers now can better understand the country’s most acute areas of need more quickly and effectively. It is called the Human Needs Index (HNI).
Developed by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and The Salvation Army, the HNI focuses not on income, as the Census Bureau report does, but on consumption – a far more illuminating picture of how people are doing in their day-to-day lives. It’s not about their means; it’s about whether their means are adequate to the fundamental needs of life.
A standardized index, the HNI includes seven types of services representing basic human needs: meals provided, groceries, clothing, housing, furniture, medical services and assistance with energy bills. The data that make up the index are comprehensive, derived since 2004 from The Salvation Army’s provision of services in thousands of communities, urban and rural, in every region of the country.
With the HNI in hand, timely information can now inform and complement anecdotal evidence in directing resources to alleviate human need in America.
The HNI tells us about regional variations in poverty and how best to focus efforts. For example, an analysis of the data showed that, in 2014, the country overall was at its lowest point of need since 2004, but several parts of the country are still experiencing acute need. Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., have yet to recover to their pre-recession levels of need.
The HNI can also provide information about the specific needs that persist in each region. Do people have adequate housing, but too little to eat? Can they clothe themselves and their children but can’t pay their heating bills? Do they have to forgo other basic needs to get medical services?
With a clear picture of the geography and the nature of real, tangible needs in our country, policymakers can gain new insights into how best to alleviate poverty with new vigor and effectiveness.
More timely information also can improve how we address poverty in the years ahead. The precise means by which government will address it are the subject of the coming elections. But the duty to exert ourselves to alleviate poverty is beyond politics. Our nation is only as strong as our weakest citizens. The Human Needs Index provides leaders across the political spectrum with a valuable tool as they assess how to make America stronger in the years ahead.
