Most New Yorkers Have Experienced Economic Hardship in the Past Year

A whopping 63 percent of New York City residents experienced economic hardship in the past year, according to a study released this week by the Robin Hood Foundation and Columbia University’s Population Research Center.

More specifically, at some point in the past year, 63 percent of New Yorkers experienced one of the following: poverty, they couldn't pay their bills or they were suffering from poor health.

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The third study in a series of poverty-related examinations by the Robin Hood Foundation and Columbia, this one specifically looks at the persistence of poverty within a year's time in New York City.

The researchers found that while New York households often get pulled out of poverty ($14,637 for one person) within a year, it's rarer for households to overcome being unable to pay their bills. Only 9 percent of households in New York were poor at both the beginning and the end of the year. who began under the poverty line at the beginning of the study were still there a year later, whereas a larger portion (20 percent) of households that suffered material hardship at both the beginning also experienced it at and the end of the year.

So while poverty tends to be more fluid, economic material hardship tends to be more stubborn.

Where do government resources come into this? From preliminary data, the Robin Hood Foundation found that the city's welfare programs and support services do a better job keeping families who are on the cusp of poverty out of poverty than they do actually lifting families that are already in poverty out of the poverty threshold, wrote Michael M. Weinstein, chief program officer at the Robin Hood Foundation.

As Weinstein wrote, there aren't yet cause-and-effect conclusions from the evidence, and there are no control groups, but the preliminary data brings up questions of poverty's persistence in New York City.

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