If you\u2019re poor, others look at you as something less than a real person, more of a number in the system, said two women who fell into poverty and with the help of others climbed out of it.<\/p>\n
But \u201cwe are all the same,\u201d said Dawn Dowden, vice president of operations of Homes of Hope in Greenville who was once homeless with her three children. \u201cFolks are just born in different circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Economic mobility is vital to Americans trying to move up the economic ladder, Sarah Sattelmeyer, senior associate, Financial Security and Mobility, Pew Charitable Trusts, told audience members at the third Straight Talk SC forum on \u201cThe Crisis of the Working Poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s tough.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmericans raised at the top and the bottom are likely to stay there as adults,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Dowden and Tammi Hart, executive assistants at Day and Zimmerman in Greenville, told their stories at the forum sponsored by the Riley Institute at Furman and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute @ Furman. The two women, who said they grew up in middle class families and knew little if anything about poverty, stressed that building relationships was vital to their successes.<\/p>\n
Dowden and her three sons fell into poverty and then homelessness after her husband was diagnosed and struggled with mental illness, unable to work because of the illness.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat rocked our family,\u201d she said. \u201cIt robbed my husband of his mind, his life, and his dreams and hopes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once a person enters the system set up to help poverty-stricken people, \u201cyou\u2019re a number,\u201d she said. \u201cWe ended up at food banks I had formerly donated to.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she found help through GAHIN, a program that houses homeless families at area churches, then provides transitional housing and helps them find permanent housing, \u201cI was so scared and in such survival mode.\u201d<\/p>\n
But although she felt a failure as a mother because she was unable to protect her children, she knew she had to do something to change the situation. She obtained a job at Homes of Hope and \u201cthat job has become my calling,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
By helping families, she helps children in the same situation hers were in. \u201cThese kids don\u2019t have a choice,\u201d she said. \u201cThese kids deserve a home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hart\u2019s journey through poverty, which lasted 20 years, began when she became pregnant as a freshman at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy version of the American dream died when I fell into poverty,\u201d she said, adding that she had two additional children within five years. \u201cI became intimate friends with the system. \u201c
\nWith a high school degree and some college, the highest pay she received was $8.50 an hour, she said. Childcare was a major challenge. When a woman looking after her children was unable to continue, Hart ended up losing her job because she had to take care of the kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had nobody to turn to,\u201d she said. Even when living in the projects, she had few friends because \u201cI was different. I was not street smart. The chains of poverty got tighter and tighter and my hope diminished,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
By that time, she had become dependent on the system. Eventually she realized she had to do something to ease the way for her children. She moved to Greenville, connected with GAHIN and found a job within two months\u2014after searching for six months when living in a rural area.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt so good,\u201d she said, \u201cbeing around people who were encouraging. I needed people who built bridges and pulled me across them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many Americans make more money in comparable dollars than their parents did, which is termed absolute economic mobility. Many fewer are able to move up a rung on the economic ladder, which is termed relative mobility, Sattelmeyer said. Of youngsters raised on the bottom rung of that ladder, 43 percent remain there as adults. Only 4 percent raised in the bottom fifth of the economic ladder, make it to the top fifth as adults.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s harder nowadays to move up a rung because \u201cthe distance between the rungs of the income ladder has widened over the past generation,\u201d she said. And it\u2019s even harder for blacks to make that move up than it is for whites in this country.<\/p>\n
The major indicators for economic mobility are financial capital, such as home ownership or savings; human capital such as skills and a college education; and social capital, which include non-financial relationships such as strong neighborhoods and professional organizations.<\/p>\n
People who manage to move out of the bottom fifth of the population economically tend to have a cushion or savings or a little wealth, she said. They are six times more likely to have more in savings, eight times more likely to have a little wealth and 21 times more likely to have equity in a home.<\/p>\n
\u201cEconomic mobility and economic security go hand-in-hand,\u201d she said. \u201cEducation has become an increasingly important driver of economic mobility\u201d and that often depends on that financial cushion of savings or financial assets.<\/p>\n
Also, \u201cwhere you live in the country really matters to your economic mobility,\u201d she said, pointing out that South Carolina lags the nation in absolute mobility and relative upper mobility while it is a higher percentage of relative downward mobility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you\u2019re poor, others look at you as something less than a real person, more of a number in the system, said two women who fell into poverty and with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":13495,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17,40,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-centers-and-institutes","category-continuing-education","category-riley-institute"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}