How realistic is Mayor Cranley's poverty goal for Cincinnati?

Of all the warm-and-fuzzy proclamations a politician can make, Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley surely hit among the warmest and fuzziest when he announced during his State of the City address that he’ll tackle childhood poverty.

He might also have set himself up for failure.

His goal: to reduce the region’s rate by 10,000 children before 2020. That represents a 22 percent reduction in a region whose central city has one of the highest concentrations of poor children in the nation.

It’s an admirably lofty goal, agreed several international poverty experts contacted by The Enquirer to determine the feasibility of the mayor’s announcement. But is it realistic? That’s tougher to say.

If it happened, it would surely make headlines worldwide and change how the planet tackles childhood poverty. The objective he’s set has so far only been attained on large scales by governments investing massive resources to make it happen – and have also benefited from the stars aligning by way of a cooperative economy and minimal political obstacles.

Make no mistake: The experts want Cranley to succeed. Trying to lift the region’s children out of poverty can’t be a bad thing, right?

“Anybody who has that idea, I wouldn’t want to discourage or trash,” said Sandra Danziger, Edith A. Lewis Collegiate Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan. “It’s a great idea. Let him run with it.”

No plan in place

Nearly two months after Cranley’s announcement, there’s no tangible plan in place. The mayor’s newly formed Childhood Poverty Task Force aims to begin drafting ideas in December with the hope of finalizing a game plan next summer.

In an interview with The Enquirer, Cranley acknowledged that he set a hefty goal ahead of mapping out the plans to reach it. He said he chose 10,000 children in part because his Hand Up Initiative – upon which he campaigned for the mayor’s post in 2013 – appears to be successful.

He said that plan, aimed at combating poverty and joblessness among all age groups in Cincinnati, is working to lift 5,000 people out of poverty through job training. The initiative, which has a $2.3 million price tag, began this spring and is set to last four years.

“I feel like we’re delivering on those objectives, and I’m very proud of that effort,” Cranley said. “But this problem is much bigger than just the city, and the city can’t solve it by itself. We want to accelerate the pace of that progress and that effect.”

So Cranley roped in civic and faith leaders from around the region, and the 10,000-child target was born.

“It’s a bold, audacious goal,” the mayor said. “But if we want to make a real historic difference, we have to set our sights on the notion that it’s morally unacceptable to have this many children in poverty.”

Here are the numbers in Cincinnati: About 53 percent of children within city limits were in poverty in 2012, according to the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey. That made the city the second worst in the country. The estimates in 2014 improved slightly but still sat at 44 percent.

But in Hamilton County, still about one-in-five children live below the poverty line, said Ross Meyer, vice president of community impact for the United Way of Greater Cincinnati.

“We still have a long way to go,” said Meyer, a member of the Cranley-launched task force. “Ten thousand is ambitious, and I think the co-chairs in landing on that initial target wanted to be ambitious but specific – specific, so that we could collectively hold ourselves accountable.”

Britain's example

Such reductions have happened elsewhere. Take Britain, for example.

“The British government set out to eliminate child poverty in a generation, and to cut it in half in 10 years,” Jane Waldfogel, a professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University, told The Enquirer in an email. Waldfogel wrote a book titled “Britain’s War on Poverty” in 2010.

“Having set that goal, they put a lot of resources into their anti-poverty effort and made remarkable progress, cutting poverty by as much as half, depending on which measure one uses," Waldfogel said.

The yardstick matters: The official poverty measure hasn’t changed since the 1960s and doesn’t weigh safety-net programs that help improve quality of life, such as food stamps, earned income tax credits or childcare and housing vouchers.

“If you just use the official poverty measure, Ronald Reagan was right: We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won,” said Michael Laracy, director of policy reform and advocacy for the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation.

But using the supplemental poverty measure, developed in 2010, shows a 40 percent reduction in poverty since the so-called war began in 1964.

“How much Cincinnati can do will depend on how much resources they put into it, and also what poverty measure they use,” Waldfogel said.

World is watching

Task force member O’dell Owens, the new medical director for the Cincinnati Health Department and former president of Cincinnati State Technical & Community College, said it’s too early to articulate any solid ideas. But he said he finds the hefty goal inspiring.

“We have to come together to fight this,” he said.

Meyer agreed: “Frankly, there’s been a tremendous community will and buy-in to do this, and to do it together. This is a crisis for our community.”

The task force is set to begin regular meetings in mid-December. It will examine efforts elsewhere to tackle poverty levels – in Colorado and North Carolina, for example – to see what has worked and what hasn’t.

By June, it’s expected to publicly present its recommendations.

It might have been more realistic to set a goal after the plans had been mapped, said Danziger, but she doesn’t pooh-pooh the idea.

“Researchers will be really eager to see what the plan is and what can be done to make it feasible,” she said.

In other words: The world is watching, Mayor Cranley.

No pressure.