Contact:
Alec Zimmerman
(608) 257-4765
[Madison, WI]— With more people working than ever before in our state’s history, poverty rates are down. Recent research from the UW-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty shows that the Wisconsin comeback has the poverty level statewide at its lowest point in nine years. Thanks to the bold reforms of Governor Scott Walker and Republican leaders, Wisconsin is working.
Read an excerpt from the Wisconsin State Journal’s coverage below or online here.
Cause and (good) effect: Jobs up, poverty down in Wisconsin, UW researchers say
Wisconsin State Journal
Bill Novak
May 23, 2017
More jobs mean less poverty in Wisconsin, according to a study released Tuesday.
The annual Wisconsin Poverty Measure study from the Institute for Research on Poverty at UW-Madison showed a jobs increase of 70,000 between January 2014 and November 2015 led to a “modest but statistically significant reduction in poverty.”
Statewide poverty dropped below 10 percent from 2014 to 2015, with the 9.7 percent rate the lowest since the Wisconsin Poverty Measure began in 2008.
Researchers said child poverty, using WPM, dropped to 10 percent, a third lower than the official child-poverty measure rate of 15.4 percent from the Census Bureau.
Elderly poverty also dropped from 8.3 percent to 7.8 percent, the WPM study said.
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Read the full coverage online here.
