• 1 in 5 adults in Philadelphia has a college degree, a lower proportion than nearly 100 other large cities
• 11 Philadelphia high schools had more than 90% of their 11 th graders scoring below grade level in reading
• A new study shows that 9 th graders in Philadelphia public schools are more likely than their upper grade peers to be taught by inexperienced, uncertified teachers (Education Week)
• Nearly 1 out of 4 Philadelphia youth ages 16 to 24 are neither working nor in school
• There is a $716 per student difference between per-student funding in high- and low-poverty districts in Pennsylvania (Education Trust State Summary 2006)
• It is generally accepted that poor children need more support to reach the same standard as their more advantages peers.
• Disadvantaged children start kindergarten with significantly lower cognitive skills then their more advantaged counterparts. Before even entering kindergarten, the average cognitive score of children in the highest socio-economic status (SES) group are 60% above the scores of the lowest SES group. (Education Commission of the States)
• Many disadvantaged children and adolescents use the Internet only at school. Only 31% of those from families with income less than $20,000 use computers at home, compared to 89% of those living in families with annual incomes over $75,000 (www.PACDC.org)

• Over 50 percent of food stamp participants are children
• Data clearly and consistently shows that schools educating the highest proportion of low-income and minority students continue to employ a disproportionate number of unqualified, inexperienced, and out-of-field teachers, offer the least rigorous curriculum to their students, and get less than their fair share of money and other resources. (Education Trust ESEA Myths)

• West Philadelphia schools receive 28% less money per student than nearby, predominately white, suburban schools (School District of Philadelphia statistics)

• 95% of West Philadelphia students are African-American
• 80% of West Philadelphia students belong to low-income households
• In 2004, 27.8% of West Philadelphia youth dropped out of high school within four years of entering 9 th grade. This was slightly worse than the citywide dropout rate of 26.2%
• Only about 50% of West Philadelphia 9th graders completed high school in four years (54.6% citywide). (Netter Center for Community Partnership)

 
To find out how you can get involved to combat this issue, please click here

HOMELESSNESS

Homelessness results from a complex set of circumstances that require people to choose between food, shelter, and other basic needs. Only a concerted effort to ensure jobs that pay a living wage, adequate support for those who cannot work, affordable housing, and access to health care will bring an end to homelessness.

• Declining wages have put housing out of reach for many workers: in every state, more than the minimum wage is required to afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent.
• Surveys in past years have yielded the percentage of homeless working to be as high as 26% (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2000).
• 62% of all homeless persons have at least a high school diploma
  (Source: Urban Institute, Sept. 2001).

• People living on the street only make up about 10% of the total homeless population in Philadelphia. Of that 10%, it is estimated that 90% are single men and 80-90% of these men have a substance abuse problem while 30% may have mental illnesses (Source: Project H.O.M.E.)

• In its 2004 survey of 27 cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayor found that the homeless population was 49% African-American, 35% Caucasian, 13% Hispanic, 2% Native American, and 1% Asian
• In 2007, cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that approximately 22% of single adults and 8% of adults in households with children had mental health issues
  (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2006).

• Nearly one-fifth (18.7%) of adults who used homeless residential services in 2005 were veterans. (HUD)
• 92% of homeless women have experiences severe physical or sexual abuse at some point in their lives, and 63% have been victims of intimate partner violence as adults. (http://www.nnedv.org/policy/issues/housing.html#_edn1)

• 50% of the 24 cities surveyed by the US Conference of Mayors identifies domestic violence as a primary cause of homelessness (2005)
• In 2007, members of households with children made up approximately 23% of persons using emergency shelter and transitional housing programs
  (US Conference of Mayors Hunger and Homelessness Survey 2007)

• In 2007, cities reported the average length of a single homeless stay for singles was 4.7 months, and for households with children in was 5.7 months

To find out how you can get involved to combat this issue, please click here

Hunger

• Food security is defined as “assured access at all times to enough food for an active and healthy life, with no need for recourse to emergency food sources or other extraordinary coping behaviors to meet basic food needsâ€�. People who frequently worry about the source of their next meal, or who need the help of food pantries or of extended family members in order to eat, are “food insecureâ€�.
• In 2007, the USDA found 12,648,000 (10.9%) of U.S. households were food insecure including 4,617,000 (4%) with hunger (www.pahunger.org)
• In 2007, an estimated 492,000 Pennsylvania households were at risk of hunger, 164,000 of these households had at lest one member experiencing hunger
• During October 2007, an estimated 460,000 Pennsylvanians received food assistance through food pantries or cupboards
• In the United States, 11.7 million children live in households where people have to skip meals or eat less to make ends meet. That means one in ten households in the U.S. are living with hunger or are at risk of hunger. (www.bread.org)
• Recent research indicates that even mild under nutrition experienced by young children during critical periods of growth may lead to reductions in physical growth and affect brain development. (Source: www.hungerinamerica.org).
• Hunger does not exist because the world does not produce enough food, the problem is one of equitable distribution. Once the political will is there, it will take a modest effort to end hunger and malnutrition worldwide. (www.bread.org)
• Hunger is defined as “the uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack of food due to the recurrent and involuntary lack of access to foodâ€�. (www.pahunger.org)
• The 2007 US Conference of Mayors survey of 23 cities, including Philadelphia found that:
  • Requests for emergency food assistance increased in 80% of the survey cities, with an average increase of 12%.
  • The major causes of hunger in survey cities are poverty, unemployment and high housing costs. The hunger crisis is exacerbated by the recent spike in foreclosures, the increased cost of living, and increased cost of food.
  • In the survey cities, 17% of all people in need of food assistance and 15% of households with children are not receiving it.
• From early September to early November 2007, the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger conducted a survey of 198 community feeding programs and found that:
  • 58% responded that they "generally did not have enough food to distribute to meet their current demand." This increased from 42% last year.
  • 78% said that they had more people coming to their feeding program in the past year compared to the year before. Reasons cited for this increase ranged from "people have to make the choice between food and medicineâ€� to “incomes isn’t increasing, but costs are."
  • 66% said that they had to reduce the amount of food distributed to each person and 37% had to turn people away because their feeding program lacked enough resources (money, food, equipment, volunteers, etc.)
  • During October 2007, an estimated 460,000 Pennsylvanians received food assistance through food pantries or cupboards

Incarceration in America

• As of June 30, 2007, approximately 2.5 million persons were incarcerated in US prisons and jails, an all time high (Human Rights News)
• This means an incarceration rate of 751 / 100,000 residents, the highest such rate in the world
• Philadelphia spends nearly $290 million annually to house 9,000 prisoners (Penn Current July 3, 2008)
• Statistics also show large racial disparities: The rate of incarceration of black men (3,145 in 100,00) is more than 6.6 times that of white men (471); for Hispanic men, the rate (1,244) is two and a half times greater than for white men. (Human Rights Watch)
• Blacks and Hispanics who constitute only 27.4 percent of the US adult population, constitute some 60 percent of all state and federal prisoners
• Nearly 11% of all black men ages 30-34 were behind bars as of June 30, 2007
• Although whites, being more numerous, constitute the large majority of drug users, blacks constitute 54% of all persons entering state prisons with a new drug offense conviction
• 4.5% of the state and federal prisoner surveyed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported sexual victimization in the past 12 months.
• Given the national prison population of 1,570,861, the BJS findings suggest that in one year alone more than 70,000 prisoners were sexually abused
• Prisons house three times more people with serious mental illness –such as schizophrenia, and bipolar disorders – than do mental health hospitals
• According to BJS data, 53% of all state and federal prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes
• Nationally, the BJS reports that over two-thirds of released prisoners are rearrested for a new offense within 3 years of their release
• There are currently 2,484 persons in US prisons serving sentences of life without parole for crimes committed when they were under the age of 18
• California , Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have the largest number of youth sentenced to juvenile life without parole. The Unites States is the only country in the world that allows youth to be sentenced to life without parole

To find out how you can get involved to combat this issue, please click here

Poverty

• Developed in the 1960s, the poverty line was drawn by the federal government by calculating the cost of a rudimentary grocery budget and multiplying by three â€" because in the 1960s food represented one-third of a typical family's budget. The dollar figure developed in the 1960s has only been adjusted for inflation, even though food is now one-seventh of a typical family's budget, and even though the formula takes no account of child care, health insurance and other expenses that are far greater today. (Washington Times, Counting what counts)
  
  
• Philadelphia has the highest percent of the population living below the poverty line among the ten biggest US cities â€" 25%
  
  
• In 2001, only 1 in 4 homeless adults did not report any mental health or substance abuse problems (Source: Urban Institute, Sept. 2001).
  
  
• In 2005, 13.3% of the U.S. population, or 38,231,521 million people, lived in poverty. Both the poverty rate and the number of poor people have increased in recent years, (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2005)
  
  
• In 2006, 18% of American children lived in poverty (Kids Count Data Center)
  
  
• In 2006, the number of families in poverty was 7.7 million

• Nearly a third of persons living in poverty had no health insurance of any kind. The coverage held by many others would not carry them through a catastrophic event
  
  
• 35% of those who do not have a high school diploma in Philadelphia live in poverty.
  (http://www.wwscholars.org/support/facts.php)
  
  
• Among children under six living in families with only a female householder (with no father present) more than one out of every two, or 52.7%, were in poverty. That’s more than five times the rate of their counterparts in married-couple families (Catholic Campaign for Human Development)
  
  
• According to the 2006 census, 8.2% of non-Hispanic whites, 10.3% of Asians, 20.6% of Hispanics, and 24.3% of Blacks are poor. (AFSC)
  
  
• A study released this January 2007 revealed that, due to its long-term effects on productivity, earnings, criminality and health, childhood poverty costs $500 billion a year.
  
  
• In area code 19104, 2,053 families are below the poverty level (American Community Survey)

To find out how you can get involved to combat this issue, please click here