Despite having multiple jobs, many black women still struggle with poverty and low incomes. A new program in Georgia will provide $ 850 in unconditional cash to up to 650 black women in the state living near or below the poverty line to ease their financial burden, reports HuffPost.
The program, called In Her Hands, will kick off in early 2022 and will pay out more than $ 13 million. This would make it “one of the largest guaranteed income pilots in the US,” according to HuffPost.
In Her Hands is supported by GiveDirectly and the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund (GRO Fund), an Atlanta-based coalition focused on racial justice.
Providing cash to individuals and families in need has proven beneficial during the pandemic. For example, a University of Michigan study found that federal economic controls significantly reduced hardship, including sharp reductions in food shortages, financial instability and anxiety, the New York Times reported in June.
According to the study, food insufficiency decreased by over 40%, financial instability by 45%, and negative mental symptoms by 20%.
The bottom line: Show black women where the money is.
Over 80% of black women are breadwinners for their families, regardless of whether they are the sole breadwinner or generate at least 40% of their household income. Without enough income for black women, entire families can struggle.
Because employers do not, on average, offer wages that keep pace with the cost of living, many black women work more than in previous years and still struggle to maintain a high quality of life. In fact, according to a 2016 study, black women are more likely than anyone else to have more jobs than a decade ago.
Hope Wollensack, executive director of the GRO Fund, said in a statement, “Black women are among the groups most likely to experience liquidity shortages that make it difficult to meet basic needs.” Financial difficulties and economic inequality are not due to “bad decisions.” “attributed, said Wollensack. Rather, “[i]It is the result of the pervasive economic insecurity that has the greatest impact on women and colored communities and the people who live on the intersection of both. ”
In Her Hands is the largest guaranteed income program in the south. It joins other Universal Basic Income (UBI) programs across the country targeting poverty that has not been adequately addressed and, in some cases, exacerbated by the private sector.
For example, Stockton, California gave residents $ 500 a month as one of the first US cities to pilot a UBI program. Commenting on the program’s impact, then-Mayor of Stockton Michael Tubbs told PBS:
[N]About one thing people didn’t stop working. In fact, we found that those who received the guaranteed income were more likely to find full-time employment and were less likely to be unemployed than before the guaranteed income, but also compared to the group of people in the control group who unfortunately did not receive the guaranteed income.
We also saw that it’s no surprise that the $ 500 allowed people to better cope with emergencies when they were dealing with income volatility. And we also found that health and mental health are impacted as low as $ 500. We saw that depression decreased. We saw that the cortisol level went down. We saw that stress and anxiety decreased.
The basis of the program in Georgia is noteworthy. Although Atlanta is home to the “Black Mecca”, Georgia “has one of the greatest economic insecurities and instabilities in the country, especially for black and brown women,” Atlanta councilor Amir Farokhi said in a statement, as reported by Reckon South.
Additionally, the Outlet found Atlanta has the largest income inequality of any major city in the continental United States, and “Black women in Georgia are twice as likely to live in poverty as white women, according to the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute. and are hardest hit by pandemic unemployment, according to the US Department of Labor. ”