Roughly three percent more Illinoisans are in poverty today than in 1999, according to the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights.
Amy Rynell, the alliance's senior director of research and policy, discusses the growing income inequality, which she says is contributing to increasing poverty in Illinois. She says the gap between the higher salaries and lower salaries continues to grow. Economists have attributed to that to growing productivity of business not filtering down into the pockets of workers.
Rynell says programs such as Temporary Aid to Needy Families, food stamps and Medicaid help those who are poor, but the economic trend toward low wages and rising poverty will continue without a public policy intervention, she says.
(Posted 9-21-2012 at 9:26am, Illinois Radio Network)