Florida Receives D+ on Women’s Poverty, Access to Opportunity, with Wide Disparities by County

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 -- The Institute for Women's Policy Research issued the following news release:

A new county-level analysis of the status of women in Florida, released by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) in partnership with the Florida Women's Funding Alliance (FWFA), finds that women in Florida have higher rates of poverty, lower educational attainment, and lower access to health insurance coverage than women in the United States overall, but the state ranks 5th in the nation on women's business ownership. The report estimates that if working women in Florida were paid the same as comparable men--men who are of the same age, have the same level of education, work the same number of hours, and have the same urban/rural status--the poverty rate among all working women would fall by 57.3 percent.

Florida overall received a D+ on IWPR's Poverty and Opportunity Index--which scores states based on the percent of women living above poverty and women's access to health insurance, a college education, and business ownership--but the report finds wide disparities in women's status by county and by race and ethnicity.

"In the last decade, Florida's grade on the Poverty & Opportunity Index has remained stuck at D+," said Julie Anderson, IWPR Research Associate and author of the report. As the state grows more diverse, addressing the economic insecurity faced by women of color will be critical to improving the state's economy overall."

Additional findings from the report on women's Poverty & Opportunity in Florida include:

More women in Florida live in poverty today than in 2004. In 2014, more than one in seven (15.4 percent) Florida women lived in poverty, compared with 12.6 percent in 2004. The state in the bottom third of all states on the share of women living in poverty and there are five Florida counties where poverty rates among women exceed 25 percent: Gilchrist (25.4 percent), DeSoto (25.8 percent), Hamilton (26.3 percent), Alachua (26.4 percent), and Hardee (29.0 percent). The poverty rates among Black women (25.2 percent), Native American (21.4 percent), and Hispanic women (21.2 percent) are around twice as high as Asian/Pacific Islander (12.6 percent) and White women (11.9 percent). Florida ranks 50th in the nation on the percent of nonelderly women with health insurance. Following the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the health insurance coverage rate among women in Florida increased, from 73.8 percent covered in 2013 to 78.3 percent in 2014, but coverage rates among women are still well below the national average of 85.4 percent. Florida did not choose to expand Medicaid under the ACA. One in five of the approximately 2.9 million adults who would have gained coverage through the Medicaid expansion provision live in Florida. Coverage rates vary widely across Florida, from a low of 60.7 percent of nonelderly women in Glades County, to a high of 86.3 percent in St. Johns County. In more than half of Florida counties, fewer than one in five women aged 25 and older has a college degree. More than one in four Florida women aged 25 and older has a bachelor's degree or higher (26.7 percent), compared with 28.1 percent of Florida men. The share of women in Florida with a bachelor's degree or higher ranges from a high of 44.3 percent in Leon County to a low of 10.0 percent in Levy County. Between 2002 and 2012, Florida had the fourth highest growth rate in women-owned businesses in the country. The share of businesses owned by women grew by nearly 85 percent to 38.5 percent in 2012. Hendry County has the highest share of women-owned businesses at 43.2 percent, while less than a quarter of businesses (24.6 percent) in Holmes County are owned by women. Black women, who account for about 16 percent of Florida's women, own 18.4 percent of the state's women-owned businesses, twice as large as the share of men-owned businesses owned by Black men (9.0 percent).

Women make up 51 percent of the 19.4 million residents in Florida, the United States' fourth most populous state. A companion report released by IWPR and FWFA finds that the state is more racially diverse and has larger proportions of immigrants, older women, and older men than the nation overall.

The report concludes with policy recommendations for improving women's status on indicators related to poverty and opportunity, including expanding health programs for low-income women, improving educational opportunities for women of color, investing in women's entrepreneurship, provide paid sick days and paid family leave, increasing the minimum wage, strengthening safety net programs, and taking steps to narrow the gender wage gap.

"Women's poverty levels--and their access to opportunity in Florida--depend on where they live," said Julie Fisher Cummings, founder/CEO of Lovelight Foundation and co-chair of FWFA. "State policymakers, grantmakers and community leaders must consider how proposed policies affect diverse populations in different ways and must take bold steps to reduce inequality and ensure that prosperity in our state is more widely shared."

The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) conducts rigorous research and disseminates its findings to address the needs of women and their families, promote public dialogue, and strengthen communities and societies. IWPR is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that also works in affiliation with the women's studies, and public policy and public administration programs at The George Washington University.

The Florida Women's Funding Alliance (FWFA) is an affinity group of Florida Philanthropic Network (FPN),that envisions a Florida where women and girls thrive. The FWFA mission is to transform the lives of women and girls through members' collective voices and resources. The Florida Philanthropic Network is a statewide membership network of nearly 120 philanthropic organizations working to build philanthropy to build a better Florida. FPN's members are private independent, corporate and family foundations, community foundations, public charity grantmakers and corporate giving programs.

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