Low wages continue to cause problems for Wyoming families

CHEYENNE – Low wages continue to present social and economic barriers for many Wyoming families – something that looming state budget cuts have the potential to exacerbate.

That’s one of the big takeaways from the 2020 Wyoming KIDS COUNT data book, which the nonprofit Wyoming Community Foundation released this week.

Since 2014, the foundation has partnered with the national Annie E. Casey Foundation – a charitable group focused on the well-being of children – to collect state-level data on the status of Wyoming’s children and families.

“The goal is to help any type of policymaker or stakeholder make good decisions using the available data,” said Samin Dadelahi, chief operating officer for the Wyoming Community Foundation. The organization worked with the University of Wyoming’s Survey and Analysis Center to collect this year’s data, which is the basis of the report. The report compared data at the county level from 2018 to 2010 – and, in some cases, 2000 – to show changes over time.

The data shows that as of 2018, 13% of the 58,118 families in Wyoming were living in poverty.

“One of the assumptions we can make is that those numbers have probably increased due to the joblessness created by COVID-19,” Dadelahi said, noting that one-third of those families are headed by single mothers. In Laramie County, for instance, the percentage of single mothers rose from 69.8% in 2010 to 71.1% in 2018.

A stagnant state minimum wage – which has not increased above $5.15 since 2002 – is one of the factors that contributes to poverty in the state. The current $7.25 federal wage trumps that figure.

But Dadelahi says that’s “still pretty low,” and that two-thirds of Wyoming’s minimum-wage workers are women. Wyoming also happens to have one of the widest gender wage gaps in the country, with women earning about 71 cents for every dollar a man earns.

The data book also provides numbers about what it takes to be self-sufficient, and shows food costs, child-care costs and housing costs, among other factors.

Dadelahi said poverty is a problem across the state, but in many rural communities, the infrastructure needed to address it is not as widespread as it might be in the state’s higher population centers like Cheyenne and Casper.

The lack of infrastructure has an effect on how many people are accessing government assistance, like the federal Women, Infant and Children program, which costs the state nothing and supplies mothers below a certain income level with food and health care. According to the data book, between 2010 and 2018, the percentage of mothers enrolled in WIC dropped from 36.8% to 26%. While teen birth rates did decline between those years, that doesn’t fully explain the decline in WIC enrollment.

Only 53% of WIC-eligible people are currently enrolled in the program. “If we cut the capacity of Department of Family Services to have a person there to assist with outreach and education, we’re just leaving that money on the table,” Dadelahi said.

She hopes lawmakers will consider the context around the data book when they meet next spring to address an estimated $1.5 billion in budget cuts, which has already resulted in slashing elder care programs.

“We’re making short-term decision that will have long-term impacts,” Dadelahi said. “The cuts we’re making are having a direct impact on our most vulnerable populations. … The conversation has to change – it can’t be all about cutting taxes. Candidates have to be questioned about how they are going to support services and programs for Wyoming’s population.”

One example of the long-term effect policy decisions can have is the increase in Wyoming’s high school graduation rates. In Laramie County, for example, on-time graduation rates increased from 72% to 81.6% between 2010 and 2018, according to the data book.

“It’s very difficult to move that needle; that’s the product of 10 and 20 years of work,” Dadelahi said, citing past investments in special education funding and child development centers. “If we make decisions now that reduce our programming, we’ll have to ask what are our high school graduation rates going to look like 20 years from now?”