By focusing attention and resources on those positioned to move out of poverty, the Mayor’s Commission Seeks to Make Work Pay, Equip the next Generation with the Tools they will need to Compete while Protecting Children of Poor Families

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today presented the recommendations of the 32-member Mayor’s Commission for Economic Opportunity. The Commission’s recommendations focus on three distinct groups of New Yorkers in poverty: working poor adults, young adults between the ages of 16 and 24, and children under the age of five. Nearly 700,000 New Yorkers who live in poverty—native-born and immigrant, and people of every race, ethnicity, and borough—fall into one or more of these three groups. The Mayor’s Commission for Economic Opportunity Co-Chairs Dick Parsons and Geoffrey Canada joined Mayor Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Linda Gibbs in announcing the completion of the first phase of the Commission’s work.

"By focusing on the working poor, we will build on the gains made in the last decade in ending ‘welfare as we knew it,’" said Mayor Bloomberg. "By concentrating on young people in poverty, we will capitalize on our reforms of the public schools, and our commitment to creating new ‘school-to-work’ programs for at-risk youngsters. And by investing in children under the age of five, we will be breaking the cycle of poverty, and improving the odds for the next generation in ways that research plainly shows will create clear and direct benefits."

With a focus of removing the roadblocks to full time employment, like the high cost of childcare for the working poor, Mayor Bloomberg announced the Administration will propose a City child care tax credit for low-income families with very young children. If it is approved by the City Council and the State Legislature, it would make New York City the first City in the nation to have such a local child care tax credit.

Additionally, the Administration will begin to automatically return the City’s portion of the EITC to every New Yorker who, based on tax filings, is entitled to it, whether they have applied for it or not. The City will provide eligible City residents with the forms they need for amended Federal and State tax returns, so they can claim the EITC from the State and Federal government.

"At every age level, there’s a strong link between low income and lack of education, said Co-Chair Geoffrey Canada. "For every incremental increase in someone’s education, there’s a corresponding sharp drop in the chance that he or she will be poor. Nearly a third of all working-age New Yorkers without a high school diploma are poor—but only 8% of those with bachelor’s degrees are poor. So, just as we need to focus on helping the working poor work their way out of poverty, we also need to encourage these young people to learn their way out of poverty."

In an effort to encourage young people to learn their way out of poverty, the Administration plans to implement the Commission’s recommendations that call for the establishment of "service learning programs" in public high schools that have high rates of student pregnancy—with the goal of preventing such pregnancies.

Through unpaid after-school and weekend community service in, for example, nursing homes, hospitals, and soup kitchens, the Administration will strive to expand the horizons of young people, give them an alternative vision of themselves and their futures, expose them to career paths they might not have considered and convince them that far from being a good way to define self-worth, becoming a teenaged mother is much more likely to be a limiting and impoverishing dead-end.

The Administration will also explore ways to creating more college-readiness programs in our public high schools. Last school year, about 33,000 public high school students took college-credit courses through a 20-year-old collaboration with the City University of New York system. Called "College Now," this program has done an outstanding job of helping students prepare for college-level work and succeed as college students.

The Administration’s goal will is to substantially increase College Now enrollment, and also expand the "CUNY Prep" program that, since 2003, has prepared hundreds of students who have already left school to earn GEDs.

The Administration will also consider adopting a strategy of extending "Conditional cash transfers" to families of at-risk young people to encourage these young adults to refrain from unhealthy behavior, and to stay in school, stay at work, and stay on track to rise out of poverty. This strategy, not currently at work in the U.S., has proven effective in other countries.

"Poverty keeps tens of thousands of children every year from reaching their full potential in school," said Co-Chair Dick Parsons. "Tens of thousands of young adults are not connected with school or work and are at risk of drifting into unproductive lives. And for more and more families, hard work is no longer sufficient to move out of poverty. Poverty diminishes the ability of 1.5 million of our fellow New Yorkers from reaching their full potential and it keeps us, as a city and a society, from reaching our full potential. Wherever possible, government and the private sector must work together to reward work and support working families"

With roughly 185,000 children under the age of five who live in poverty, the Administration is considering the expansion of the City’s pilot Nurse Family Partnership program (NFP). NFP is designed for low-income first-time mothers who are often ill-prepared for the life-altering stresses of parenthood. An experienced nurse provides them and other family members the practical guidance they need during the very demanding first two years of an infant’s life. In many cases, these nurses offer the first examples of capable, nurturing parenthood that young mothers have ever experienced.
Nurse Family Partnerships are a proven success. Last year’s decline in African-American and Puerto Rican infant mortality—reported in the recent MMR—was attributable in part to the success of the pilot NFP program the Administration has launched in several communities.

In other parts of the country, low-income women and their now-teenaged children who have been involved in NFP programs over many years have had dramatically reduced rates of child abuse and neglect, lower rates of dependency on public assistance, and fewer run-ins with the law. The Administration believes NFP has the potential for similar results in New York City.

Mayor Bloomberg is directing the relevant City agency, under the direction of Deputy Mayor Gibbs, to develop an action plan within the next 60 days in order to turn the Commission’s recommendations into policies and practices. Such an action plan will include proposed budgets and timetables, and accurate ways to measure the outcomes and effectiveness of the Administration’s adoption of methods to increase economic opportunity and make work pay.

"The fundamental purpose of our Commission has been to pinpoint concrete ways in which our City can act to ensure poor New Yorkers have the resources they need to help themselves move ahead," said Deputy Mayor Gibbs. "The Commission has concentrated its attention on strategies that have a proven record of results. The immediate beneficiaries of the Commission’s work will be those who are provided with the help and encouragement they need to rise out of poverty. Ultimately, however, by reducing need, rewarding personal initiative and reaffirming hope, we will create a future that benefits every New Yorker."