Colorado needs to do more to help families pull themselves out of poverty, according to a report by The Bell Policy Center, a Denver-based think tank.
The “State of Opportunity 2005 Report” found that one-third of the state’s households earn less money that it takes for a family of four to be self-sufficient.
The report, released earlier this month, also highlights some surprising contradictions:
Colorado has one of the best-educated populations in the nation, yet the state’s high-school graduation rate lingers below 70 percent.
Residents are among the healthiest in the country, but Colorado mothers give birth to low-weight babies more often than the national average.
Colorado is a relatively prosperous state, but nearly one in five adults do not have health insurance coverage.
Bell officials said the report is a call to boost state spending on programs that can help families take care of themselves.
“Government is not a building for the department of bureaucracy,” said Wade Buchanan, Bell’s president. Instead, government is a tool to help residents improve their lives, he said.
The center’s researchers prefer to measure “self-sufficiency” rather than rely on the federal government’s benchmark, poverty level. The self-sufficiency standard measures income levels against the cost of living and adjusts according to location.
In Denver, the annual income required for self-sufficiency for a family of three is $41,652. To attain that level of income, a person typically needs to complete a college education. The median annual earnings of an adult worker with an undergraduate degree in the U.S. total $40,588.
But many families struggle to send their children to college, according to the Bell study.
Most of Bell’s 55 recommendations call for increasing government spending, but it does not put a total cost on its proposals.
That’s partly because some costs are impossible to determine, such as the cost of a task force evaluating the teaching of high-school math. And it’s partly because some costs are so high.
One recommendation – the expansion of Medicaid to more families – would cost $2 billion per year.
The recommendations are long-term goals.
Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, said spending more government money isn’t the answer.
“I am remarkably surprised that liberals’ answer to a better quality of life means more government spending,” said Caldara. “It’s quite the opposite. They think that all we need to do is spend more and more money and if we spend enough, then finally everybody will be happy and well-adjusted.”
But Bell’s officials say they are simply trying to help people get on the “cycle of opportunity.”
“This is not about making guarantees, but we want to give everyone an opportunity,” said Rich Jones, Bell’s director of policy and research. “Once a family gets into a cycle, they tend to stay in it.”
Staff writer Mark P. Couch can be reached at 303-820-1794 or mcouch@denverpost.com.
