A professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston economics, Dr. Randy Albelda spoke Thursday about why poverty disproportionately affects women in America and proposed potential solutions to this problem as part of a Women's History Month program coordinated through the social action and women's branches of Hillel, Tzedek Hillel and Nashim.Albelda, who specializes in gender and race bias, as well as legislation on tax reform, explained that children and women are particularly vulnerable to poverty.

"Three-fourths of poor people in the United States are women and children," she said. "Children make you poor, your parents make you rich. If you have children, your likelihood of being poor goes up. One-third of single-mother-families in the United States are poor. That is historically low... The chance of a child being in a single-parent family at some point during their childhood is 50 percent."

According to Albelda, there are two main ways of explaining why people find themselves beneath the poverty line.

"One way of explaining why people are poor is to blame them... [The other is to say that] they face structural impediments to earning income," she said.

Albelda described certain "poverty-producing behaviors," including having children out of wedlock, also known as the "wombs-gone-wild" theory, as a way of indicating poverty. To discount this theory, she pointed out that the fertility rate in the United States has decreased over the last 40 years.

She said that the lack of available transportation, childcare and benefits in low-wage jobs "doom any workers -- but especially mothers." Because of these factors, single mothers, and therefore their children, are more vulnerable to poverty she explained.

Albelda also discussed the single mother's responsibility to care for her children., who seldom have strong community, networks which may serve as surrogate caretakers in these instances.

"We don't have a system for single part-time [working] mothers," Albelda said, indicating that single mothers may be able to work only part-time in order to care for their children. She added that part-time work does not afford the same health and additional benefits as full-time work.

Albelda stated that the public assistance programs provided for the poor are simply not comprehensive enough, noting that the Earned Income Tax Credit has helped, food stamps are available only to some and eligibility for welfare is too limited.

Solutions to poverty, according to Albelda, include the creation of part-time benefits for part-time workers, an increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit, an increase in the minimum wage, equal pay for work of equal value, a shorter work week, universal out-of-school programs, paid maternity leave and universal health care coverage.

"If we can go to war, we can do this,"she said at the conclusion.

Sarah Freidson '04, an organizer of the event, said that Tzedek Hillel and Nashim chose to plan this event because of Jewish traditions of seeking justice and aiding the poor.

Citing Deuteronomy, she said, "Justice, justice, you have to pursue," and further went on to indicate that the book also mentions that you should "love the stranger" and take care of the orphan and the widow.