Teaching about Poverty

Exercises:

Exercise 5: Experiencing How Class Affects Lifestyle and Family Life

printable version

Goal: To provide participants with a concrete experience that will help them to rethink their assumptions about the relationship between work and poverty.

Materials needed:

• name-tags in four different colors
• sufficient copies of each family worksheet for all members of each group
• 4 large flip charts, one per group and dry markers

Directions:
Split the group into four subgroups. If people were asked to wear name-tags, provide four different color name-tags at the start of the meeting, and use the colored name-tags to put these people into each of the four groups. Or, have them number off into four groups.

Give members of each group one of the four color-coded family worksheets.

Tell each group that they are the family described on their worksheet. Give them 30-40 minutes to create a monthly budget.

Tell them they have to make ends meet in this exercise. Giving up is not an option. They must come up with a means for their family to survive. When completed, their budget should be displayed on the flip chart and they should prepare to discuss with the rest of us the decisions they made, problems they had, and also answer the question: what things are now luxuries to you that used to be necessities? Or what things you thought were luxuries are now necessities?

Facilitator is to move around the room, answering questions about options they may want to explore (ex. welfare, food stamps, other programs they may want to get help from). Have the eligibility requirements with you, so you can answer these questions accurately.

Groups will want to know if the options they chose can actually be used. Most people overestimate the eligibility requirements for aid programs and also the aid that can be gotten for those who are eligible.

Once the time is up, each group, beginning with the highest class families, will report, using their flip-charts to display their budget, and the decisions they made.

Facilitator and others can now ask them questions.

Example: How easy or hard was it to come up with the budget? How did it feel to be this family? What are the options you can use to make it work?

 

Red Group

• You are a 23-year-old woman with two children (ages three and five).
• You get TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), $164 per month. If you work and earn more than $164 a month, generally speaking, you cannot get TANF. Your check will be reduced dollar for dollar by the amount you earn.
• If you participate in a job training program, child care is guaranteed.
• You get $326 per month in food stamps. (Food stamps only cover food items-- not paper towels or other paper goods, laundry detergent, alcohol, etc.)
• Your rent is $265 a month including utilities. Your rent is not subsidized. (Only about a third of eligibles get help.)
• You left school at age 17 when you had your first child.
• You have no job experience and had no health care until you signed up for TANF--you now have Medicaid.

1. Work out a budget for yourself. How do you make it?

2. How does this feel?

3. How can you change your situation? Be specific to take into account any additional costs to the changes you propose.

 

Yellow Group

• You are part of a working poor family of three. (Husband, wife and a two-year-old child)
• Husband works at Wendy’s for $5.65 an hour. When he is lucky, he gets 30 hours a week, but averages 25 hours a week about 50 weeks a year. (Gross of $7,063 a year or a net of $6,400.)
• Your family has one car, a 1986 Ford Tempo.
• Average child care cost range is $75-80 per week, per child (usually more for infant care). Subsidized child care has a statewide waiting list of 8,000--its cost is based on income.

1. Work out a budget for your family. How do you make it?

2. How does this feel?

3. How can you change your situation? Be specific to take into account any additional costs to the changes you propose.

 

Blue Group

• You are part of a lower middle class family. You are a mother with two kids (ages five and eight).
• You make $20,000 a year gross ($17,000 net) working full time as a lower level staff person at a local University. You have health insurance to cover yourself and children.
• You rent a two bedroom apartment for your family at $400 a month ($500 including utilities).
• You own a 1986 Ford Tempo.

1. Work out a budget for yourself. How do you make it?

2. How does this feel?

3. How can you change your situation? Be specific to take into account any additional costs to the changes you propose.

 

Green Group

• You are part of an upper middle class family of three. Husband, wife and a three-year-old child.
• Both the husband and wife work as tenured professors at a local University. He makes $38,000 a year gross and she makes $36,000 a year gross. (Total $74,000 annual gross/ $54,000 net.)
• Your monthly house mortgage payment is $600 not including utilities.
• You have two cars--a 1993 Saturn that is paid for and a newer Saturn with monthly payments of $340.
• Neither of you have any student loans to pay off.
  

1. Work out a budget for yourself. How do you make it?

2. How does this feel?

3. How can you change your situation? Be specific to take into account any additional costs to the changes you propose.