Report published by non-partisan CPPP says poverty in Texas is higher than the rest of America – and growing faster

Republican frontrunner Rick Perry has put his economic record as Texas governor at the heart of his presidential nomination campaign, but a report has painted a stark picture of rising unemployment and spiralling poverty in the state.

The policy paper, published by the Austin-based non-partisan Center for Public Policy Priorities, said poverty in Texas was currently higher than the rest of the US and was growing faster.

The paper said poverty rates in Texas had jumped from 17.3% in 2009 to 18.4% in 2010, and compared them to figures for the US of 14.3% in 2009, rising to 15.1% in 2010. That suggests there are currently around 4.6m Texans living in poverty, which is currently defined as an income of $22,113 a year for a family of four.

Frances Deviney, one of the CPPP co-authors of the study, said the figures showed Texas's recent economic policies were not improving the lot of many ordinary Texans, even though some segments of Texan society did well at high income levels.

"The economic model is working very well for some people and not well for a lot of people," Deviney said. She added that the current poverty rate for Texas children was currently also higher than the general level, and had hit about one in four.

Some organisations in Texas have grown increasingly vocal in their criticisms of Perry and the Texan economy. John Turner, a senior director at the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, said his organisation was now delivering 50% more food to the poor than it had done three years ago.

"These new poverty numbers are, unfortunately, no surprise. Hunger is a result of lack of income and of a liveable wage. It affects too many of our citizens under the current Texas economic model," Turner said.

Perry, however, has remained firmly committed to his economic record. He emphasises his record on job creation, saying that since June 2009, 40% of all new jobs created in America have been created in Texas. In the Republican debate this week he claimed workers were flocking to Texas because of the economic climate he had created: one he would export to the rest of the US.

"They're coming to Texas because they know there's still a land of freedom in America, freedom from over-taxation, freedom from over-litigation and freedom from over-regulation, and it's called Texas. We need to do the same thing for America," Perry said.

However, the CPPP has pointed out, despite the large numbers of jobs created in Texas, unemployment in the state is now on the rise and has been for almost two years. Though still lower than national levels, Texas unemployment is at 8.2% for 2010, an increase from 7.6% in 2009. It is now at 8.4% for July 2011, marking 23 consecutive months of increases.

Critics also point out that many of the jobs created in Texas are low wage, and not guaranteed to lift people out of poverty. Texas's percentage of low wage jobs far outpaces the national rate for the US. and also that of neighbouring states like Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

"Job growth has not kept up with working-age population growth, which has driven up unemployment. And high unemployment combined with a lot of low wage jobs drives up poverty," the CPPP study said.

The political emphasis on Texas's economic record comes at a time when America is struggling to come to terms with a set of national data, released this week, which revealed record numbers of people falling below the poverty line. The US census bureau reported that 2.6m slipped into poverty last year. That helped make up a new record total of 46.2m Americans who are now living in poverty. The number is the highest recorded since the bureau started publishing poverty data 56 years ago.

Professor Sheldon Danziger, director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, said that stagnant real wages for many working people over the last three decades had created large pools of poverty that were now a structural part of the US economy. He added that the current political climate, where government spending programmes are being slashed, was unlikely to provide policies that would alleviate the problem.

"There are lots of reasonable things we can do, but it is much harder in the current political climate," he said.

Danziger said that his best scenario for the US would see poverty rates decline from their current national levels of 15.1% to the 2000 rate of 11.7% by no earlier than 2017. But, he added, such a scenario was far from guaranteed.

"That is a dismal scenario and that is also the best case," he said.