An Iowa State program seeks to create quality job opportunities in the state’s communities to help families break past the poverty line.

Cynthia Fletcher, professor and extension specialist in human development and family studies, recently completed a study on poverty in Iowa households with and without children.

Although the main moneymakers of many of Iowa’s 47,000 poor families are working, Fletcher said the fact that they are employed is not always enough to bring them above the poverty line.

“There’s a high proportion, about 70 percent of families with children, that report some earned income,” she said.

The Quality Jobs for Quality Communities Project at ISU works to find out why the working poor aren’t able to make ends meet, Fletcher said. One reason such a high proportion of families are working and still in poverty is the prevalence of part-time work.

Fletcher said 40 percent of families with children have someone working part time. She said employment barriers such as child-care availability and transportation may prevent household heads from working full time.

The quality of jobs available in Iowa’s rural communities may cause even full-time workers to be among the poor, Fletcher said.

“Those families [with members working full time] are doing what society expects of them,” she said.

“A lot of the working poor live in non-metropolitan Iowa, whereas job growth is in the metropolitan areas,” she said. “We’ve got a mismatch of where people live and where job opportunities are.”

Education can improve a person’s chance to get a high-paying job, but it is not the only factor, she said.

“[Education] is important, but it’s clearly not the only ticket out of poverty,” Fletcher said. “In the general population, there is a correlation between income and education. That doesn’t necessarily play out.”

Personal characteristics of families and workers may limit people from working full time or obtaining a higher job wage, no matter their education level, Fletcher said. The study indicated that only 12 percent of working poor families were headed by a person with a college degree.

The Quality Jobs in Quality Communities program’s outreach activities are ongoing, Fletcher said. Extensions in local communities hold forums and begin discussion on creating quality job opportunities.

“The word ‘quality’ means a lot of different things to different people,” Fletcher said. “The idea of the project is to encourage communities to think beyond wages.”

Fletcher cited factors such as working conditions and the impact of industry on the environment as other aspects of “quality” jobs.