Cover
story
Those
with child care, health care are more likely to keep jobs
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff
Groundwork for a Just World is a faith-based, 5,000-member social
change organization that operates primarily in Michigan and Indiana. During the
past two years the group embarked on a study of welfare reform similar to that
undertaken by Network, the national Catholic social justice lobby. Groundwork,
working independently but cooperating with Network’s study, produced the
Michigan Assemblies Project, called MAP.
The project, coordinated by Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Barbara
Beesley, called together poor working people in 11 assemblies across Michigan.
The project learned that those able to remain in jobs were the ones with
“fewer problems with transportation, child care and access to job-related
health care.”
MAP reported in November that longer-term employment “did not
mean families were self-sufficient or able to move their children out of
poverty.” Even among employed respondents who had been in the same job 24
months or more, one-third are making less than $7 an hour, Beesley said.
A longer employment record does not mean a greater likelihood of
health coverage. Whether poor families are “unemployed, weakly linked or
strongly attached to employment,” one in five has no health coverage.
The Michigan Assemblies Project was funded by the Adrian Dominican
Sisters, the Grand Rapids Dominican Sisters, the Maria Anna Brunner Fund,
Michigan Fair Budget Action Coalition, Michigan Women’s Foundation, the
W.K. Kellogg Foundation and individual donors.
National Catholic Reporter, April 30,
1999
|
