KUAF and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation are taking a closer look at how folks in the Natural State are making ends meet. ALICE, or asset-limited, income-constrained, employed households, are the focus of a recent initiative. Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis wanted to get a broad idea of what that means for Arkansans, so he connected with Shantell Hinton for some perspective.
She's the director of narrative strategies for the foundation. The foundation and United Way's United For ALICE program have collaborated over the past decade to explore how people above the federal poverty level can still struggle financially. Hinton says her job as a narrative strategist is all about creating stories through terms like ALICE.
Shantell Hinton: One of the things that we are trying to do at the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation is change the conversation about what our economy actually is like. And so I am using the ALICE research and the ALICE report to really elevate this conversation about people who are working extremely hard and still not being able to make ends meet.
And that itself is a narrative. Most of the times when we think about, you know, people who are working hard, you automatically think about the American dream and, oh, well, if you work hard, you're going to be successful. Well, we can see from the ALICE data that that is not all the way true all the time.
And so the narrative strategy piece is how can we help to amplify and elevate this conversation so that people understand that our economy is not working for nearly half of the population of Arkansas.
Jack Travis: Well, maybe we could break it down into what exactly is an ALICE household and an ALICE person. What are those different qualifications?
Hinton: Yeah. So ALICE stands for asset-limited, income-constrained and employed. And it includes not only people who are making below the federal poverty level, which that was a measure that was adopted as federal policy several decades ago. So it's very, very antiquated.
And so ALICE includes people who are already qualified as making under the federal poverty level, but also it takes into account other parts of the budget, other things that are needed to actually survive and have a decent life. And so it looks at the bare minimum you would need to make to be able to have an okay life and be able to provide for your family.
So those who are ALICE, again, are those who are working, but oftentimes are one financial disaster away from being out on the streets and or homeless. ALICE is your dental hygienist. ALICE is the barista at the local coffee shop. Many times, ALICE is somebody who's sitting right next to you at your local church or place of worship, and many times you wouldn't know it because they don't look to be struggling.
Many times when we talk about poverty, Jack, we see that people automatically go to thinking about abject poverty, which is those who are in homeless shelters and things of that nature. What the ALICE data does is shows us that many folks who are experiencing poverty are also people who are doing everything right. They're working two and three jobs and still simply cannot afford to give their kids a better life.
Travis: How do you see this play out in Arkansas?
Hinton: In Arkansas, there's a lot of different factors. And so some of the other research that we have done at the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation is understanding that seven out of 10 jobs in Arkansas are not paying a livable wage. They're paying less than minimum wage.
And so that means that in Arkansas, many people who are ALICE are not only working one full time job, but they're many times working a gig job. So it might be that they're doing food delivery or they're, you know, cutting yards on the weekend. You see in Arkansas, a lot of people who are hustling, that's how I would call it in my family, hustling. They are doing all the right things while also trying to do things on the side to make extra money.
We live in a largely rural state as well, and so we see a lot of issues with transportation, lack of access to proper health care. I just recently saw something where it said there's only maybe like 30% of counties in Arkansas have a place for people to go to have a child, to birth a baby.
And so when you think about ALICE and these people who are working on these jobs, doing these things, but still don't have access to the amenities, the type of infrastructure and support systems, many times you are seeing that the struggles do not outmatch, they can, they cannot outwork the struggles of what it means to be ALICE, particularly in a very rural state that doesn't have the best infrastructure in place to be supportive.
We also see that our SNAP benefits are something that has been talked about quite a bit, and many times people who are ALICE are making above the threshold to be able to receive SNAP benefits, but they absolutely need that support. And so there's a lot of conversations around, well, what do we need to be doing differently about our social safety net programs as well? And so it's just like a perpetual cycle of one thing after the other.
Travis: It's interesting that you mentioned the terms gig or hustle. You see a lot of this kind of playing out in the news, right? The gig economy, hustle culture. Are you seeing it being normalized more?
Hinton: I wish that we could say that, Jack. I think it's becoming more common to see that nationally. But you still see that there's a stigma. There's still a stigma attached to people who are struggling financially as though they are lazy, as though it's some sort of personal choice or personal character flaw that they are not able to provide for their families. And a lot of times we are seeing folks who are, you know, the rideshare driver, what have you, not being taken as seriously as the essential workforce that they are.
When we went into COVID, Jack, it was those folks who were still doing the essential work, like showing up at the clinics, still trying to do online teaching, people who are trying to keep our transportation system open. That was an essential workforce. And many people are still acting as though that wasn't something that was absolutely necessary, and that the work itself was not a respectable form of work. And so I think in Arkansas, we still have some work to do to overcome this idea that one type of work is more important than another type of work.
Travis: So they're not qualifying for federal assistance, but what resources are available? What's the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and United For ALICE, what are y'all doing to combat these troubling trends?
Hinton: Yeah, such an excellent question. So many of our grantees and partners are doing an amazing job advocating for employers to try to do a little bit more around their employee based benefit system so that many of their workers who are ALICE are able to enjoy some more incentives, whether it's around child care benefits. Child care is one of the major budget busters of ALICE. And so one of the things that many of our grantees have been working on is employer based benefits.
And also we have this initiative called ALICE at Work, where we have invited, I want to say we've done three or four cohorts of different employers across the state of Arkansas who are coming and learning specifically about what it means to be ALICE in Arkansas so that they can adjust their policies within their organization to be more supportive, whether it's offering more time off or offering more access to health care benefits. Sometimes that's difficult, right? These are all things that have a cost associated with them. But we are hoping that by at least starting the conversation, people are going to be more sensitive to that.
I know that in my own life, having grown up ALICE for some time, my mom, when she was a single mom, really benefited from places like Goodwill. We went and got us some thrift clothes and that was not, you know, something that I'm ashamed to talk about. We also were a part of a group when my mom helped coordinate a group for children who were experiencing poverty to go on immersion trips and learn different things so that they wouldn't be able to feel left behind as it relates to the exposure to new things.
And so I know that in Arkansas, there are some programs that do support young people who are ALICE. There also are grantees like Our House. They do a lot around supporting people who are looking for work, looking for housing.
And I think mainly we also are, because we understand that the employer ecosystem in Arkansas, there are a lot of small businesses in Arkansas. Small businesses are really the bread and butter of our economy. We are trying to be thoughtful around what does it mean to capitalize people who are small business owners so that they are able to be more inclusive and supportive of their employee base staff. So those are some of the things that we're doing.
We also have a portfolio at Winthrop Rockefeller, Jack, that focuses on our advocacy and speaking with legislators, because we know that in order for our economy to really shift in Arkansas, we're going to have to see some big policy change and some systems change. And so we're working with employers. I'm sorry. We are working to have conversations with legislators, giving them this research, letting them see people in your district, people who are your constituents are struggling to have work, are struggling to get to work, are struggling to have health care, hopefully so that the legislators can be making some even small but incremental change to be more supportive of ALICE households.
I definitely want people to know if you've ever been ALICE, or if you are ALICE now, there is no shame in it. What is a shame is that our economy, unfortunately, is not as supportive as it needs to be for folks who are doing everything right, who are working extremely hard and who just want to have a better life for their children.
And so I would hope that people who are ALICE start to feel less stigmatized and more able to talk about their experiences, because I think the honesty about the lived experience of what poverty does to us is what is going to help us move toward a future where all of us can thrive.
That was Shantell Hinton with the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation speaking with Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis. Their conversation took place over Zoom.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
