Maine's Families: Poverty Despite Work.

Children are among the poorest of Maine's residents. Nearly 1 in 5 children under the age of 18, 19.3%, lived in families below the federal poverty line in the early 1990s. Most of these poor children lived in working families. The working poor are often missing from policy debates, but their numbers are likely to increase with welfare reform efforts. In Maine, working poor families represent a broad cross-section of the state's population. Job growth in Maine has been concentrated in industries with low average pay, and federal and state policies have contributed to working poverty. Because most poor children are in families with a worker, the high child poverty rate in Maine is unlikely to decline significantly without efforts to assist low-wage working families. Steps the state could take to help the working poor include: (1) enacting a state earned income credit; (2) raising the minimum wage; (3) modifying the rules for aid to families with dependent children to allow families to earn more without a loss of benefits; (4) strengthening the unemployment insurance system; and (5) responding to the child care and health care needs of the working poor. As these policies helped alleviate child poverty, they would promote the broad goals of welfare reform by helping parents support their families. (Contains nine figures and seven tables.) (SLD)