Before our interview with Columbia graduate and data analyst Yang Jiang, we believed that the organization she works with, NCCP (national center for child poverty) was a place children living in poverty could go to. After basing a lot of our questions for Dr. Jiang about what NCCP aims to achieving, we were very surprised to find out that misleading website and all, the NCCP is a data analyzing company more than a poverty fighting organization.

The job of the “organization” is to analyze national poverty rates and inform the government of whether their poverty fighting programs are working or not. What most struck me is that Dr. Jiang told us that, in general, she believes that poverty rates need to be thought about more. They cannot be passed by and not listened to. Dr. Jiang told us that a lot of things need to be more often considered. For example, she told us that 38% of African/African-American children under the age of 18 are living under the poverty level. 16 million children in the U.S. are living in poverty. She also told us that to be considered impoverished, a family of four must earn less than $23,550 a year. But, upon conducting research and analyzing the cost of expenses, a family of four needs at least double this amount to cover the costs of daily necessities. So, even though a family may not have nearly enough money to be able to live comfortably. These families are called, “low income”, when really, they too are struggling to make ends meet just as those who are impoverished are. This is also the problem with food stamps, you have to be under a certain income level. But, you must be under the income level before taxes and bills are added. What this means is that even if you are short of at the end of the month once bills have been payed, you cannot apply for food stamps if your initial income was over the level. Dr. Jiang believes, along with others, that the application process for food stamps needs to be changed because it denies benefits to immigrants who don’t have the correct paperwork, and requires a lot of paperwork to be filled out. I think that if her job offered it, Dr. Jiang would be an amazingly dedicated volunteer. Because she grew up in a rural area of China, she was exposed to extreme poverty at an early age. This is what caused her to want to help people living in poverty. Because, even though Dr. Jiang doesn’t do hands on work, the data she analyzes helps the government to see what benefit programs need to be fixed, and how they can be more effective in helping the impoverished citizens.