WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The US government should raise the national minimum wage to fight growing poverty across the United States, Oxfam America Senior Domestic Policy Advisor Jeffrey Buchanan told Sputnik.
"If we want to address the federal poverty rate as it exists today, we need to increase wages, starting by raising the federal minimum wage," Buchanan said on Wednesday. "Surely the United States can do more to address poverty."
However, Buchanan insisted that the US federal programs reduced suffering among the poor and did not cause or add to their problems.
"The official US poverty numbers fail to capture how anti-poverty programs like food stamps, the earned income tax credit, and social security impact family budgets and supplement market incomes," Buchanan said.
The US Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure documented the positive impact of federal government social programs on impoverished families’ budgets and their role in helping millions of people get out of poverty, Buchanan stated.
