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The family's dairy farm no longer provides enough income to support the family. Husband Larry Harris works in construction, where he makes $1,800 a month, and Denise earned $5.45 an hour last season transplanting flowers and vegetables in a greenhouse. She is searching for a full-time job and raising free-range chickens and raspberries in the meantime. She used to imagine that by this time in her life, things would be more settled. "I sat and wrote in my journal, 'Things are different in 1995,'" she says. "All of us are wondering what we're going to do. Life seems so precarious. But there are a lot of people in denial."
THE LEARNING GAP
IF YOU HAVE GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE, the chances that you will live in poverty are less than 2%, vs. almost 20% for those with only some high school. "We are seeing a higher correlation between education, earnings and benefits than we have ever seen in the history of this country," says Labor Secretary Reich. "If you are not educated and trained, technology tends to replace you." But it is little comfort to the working poor to be told they are victims of shifts in the global labor market and of advancing technology. What are they supposed to do? they ask. Follow the jobs to Thailand? Learn to use a computer?
"If I could do it all again, I would go to college, become a doctor," says William Robinson, who works three jobs in Appomattox County, Virginia. "Just, at the time, I didn't feel like going." He works six days a week, about 80 hours, for an annual income of less than $20,000. He studies traffic for the state transportation department, he stacks shelves at the local Food Lion, and he works as a medic for the National Guard. His wife is legally blind. Before the couple got married, she received a $265 federal disability allowance, but the subsidy was cut off because William earned too much. When all the basic necessities have been covered each month, the Robinsons are left with about $14.
He stands on the wooden steps in front of his double-width trailer home and looks proudly out over the mounds of stones and gravel that one day will be a circular driveway. "Just like rich people have," he says. Mary Robinson's grandmother sold the couple the two-acre plot of land for $500. "She offered to give it to us, but I wouldn't take it for free," William, 32, explains. It took him more than two years to pay off his elderly in-law in $10 and $20 installments; then he used the equity to borrow for the trailer. "It's taken so long to get this far. But we finally did it."
He is determined that his daughter Whitney, 7, will not take her education lightly. "She is already talking about going to college," says William. "I'm encouraging her to be a doctor. When I play Barbie dolls with her, we're always playing accident, and she is the emergency technician going to the scene.''
WHO'S TO BLAME?