The year 1999 saw difficult times for families and especially children in Milwaukee county. With money problems troubling society at the time, many families were split between making a decision on selecting Milwaukee Chapter 7 or Milwaukee Debt Settlement plan to deal with their financial problems. Despite the best attempt of employed families in the county, many of them had earnings below the poverty line. This fact is in correspondence with Wisconsin state tax returns. According to a census carried out that year, the calculated figure of children living in such families was found to approach 59,100. There was another spectrum of so called “Near poverty” families who were employed with a salary of approximately 105-185% above the determined poverty level. The census showed that another astonishing figure of 53,800 children were found to reside in those families.
Further Studying the records, it reveals another interesting finding. In the “extreme poverty” range, the number of children of employed families was seen to fall. At the same time this figure was increasing in the “Near Poverty” range. The decrease and increase were 3% and 6% respectively. The problem with families facing the criteria of “Near Poverty” is that they are less probabale to get public care for their children and enjoy food stamps or medical insurance, for which facilities they are highly suitable.
In 1998, income tax credits which were earned by the state aided around 52,081 families bringing 16,800 county children out of the poverty spectrum. But these claim rates dropped in 1999 and eligible families with credits mounting to 5,731 dollars failed to claim their share. In 1998, a heavy figure of about 27 million dollars in federal and tax credits of the state remained unclaimed. On the bright side, the number of working families had rose from 1993 to 1999. Unfortunately such increase did not profit the children much and the figure of children being attended properly estimated to be 28,000 lower than the number in 1993.
Families comprising only a father or a mother dominated the statistics. Their number had approached 49% of all families living in the county. Putting it in layman terms, one of every three single-parent-families in the employment range had wages below the poverty line by 185%! These sad figures readily stand for themselves. You can imagine the sort of hardship the children living in this county must be coming across.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. The state of Wisconsin has focused of such figures and has been working to improve the lifestyle of the hard pressed children living there. A good model to illustrate this is the existence of three medical insurance programs accessible to children living in households of low earning. Medicaid (MA) has been made accessible to families meeting the criteria of eligibility described in July 1996. Another program named Healthy Start, helps by supplying medical coverage for the families that have expecting women or children of age 6 years. A Badger Care Program is for uninsured families failing to meet the criteria of the above.
Connor R. Sullivan recently researched Milwaukee chapter 7 files for an article he is writing on the subject. He checked the Milwaukee debt settlement records for his sister.
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