“We Don’t Feel ‘Poor’”: How Vibrant Hawaii’s Lived Experience Data Is Shaping Community Understanding and Decisions
by Joyce Lee-Ibarra, JLI Consulting LLC
This post is part of a series regarding data equity. In this post, we explore the limitations of publicly available sources in contributing to our understanding of communities, as well as the value of collecting people’s lived experiences in our notions of “data.”
Few decision makers in Hawaii haven’t heard of Aloha United Way’s ALICE: A Study of Financial Hardship in Hawaiʻi. Originally published in early 2017, and updated this year prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the report sheds light on the financial pressures that thousands in our state’s ALICE (Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed) households face. The ALICE population, as the report explains, comprises those who live above the federal poverty line but below a basic survival income threshold, and cuts across gender, age group, and race/ethnicity.
Hawaii ALICE Report Tells a Data-Rich, But Incomplete Story
In many ways, the report put data and figures to what those who live in Hawaii have known for years: that our state’s high cost of living squeezes even those households where people are fully employed, forcing many to live paycheck-to-paycheck. One of the most striking takeaways from the 2017 report: In combination with households below the poverty level, nearly half—48 percent—of Hawaii’s households struggle to support themselves.
The report certainly captures an important perspective on financial hardships experienced by households throughout Hawaii, but is that picture complete? How did the story told by the ALICE report square with people’s lived experience across the state, and within communities? And how well do the financial threshold-defined notions of being “poor” or “struggling” match with community members’ own notions of what these terms mean?
On-the-Ground Experiences Provide Different Perspective of Being “Poor”
Vibrant Hawaii, a Hawaii Island-based collective impact coalition, was launched in March 2017 with some of these questions as an undercurrent. Following a deep study of the Hawaii ALICE report, community members across the Big Island were initially struck by what the data showed about Hawaii County: a staggering 61 percent of the county’s households were categorized as struggling to meet basic needs. In some county districts, more than three-fourths of households were labeled as struggling.
Photo Credit: Vibrant Hawaii
Through a series of listening sessions across the island, Vibrant Hawaii’s leadership council met with more than 30 cross-sector leaders and 90 stakeholders, both to share the report’s findings, and to learn about people’s experiences living within ALICE communities. What they heard surprised them. Many community members in attendance expressed that they didn’t, in fact, feel “poor,” despite the ALICE report’s findings. In particular, three key conditions countered residents’ perceptions of being poor or struggling:
Access to resources: “Resources” included not only tangible assets, such as computers that could be accessed at a local library, but also natural resources such as the beaches and oceans. It also encompassed social capital, such as connections to family, friends, and neighbors.
Having choice: “Choice” included not only affirmatively choosing certain options, it also meant the ability to opt out of other choices. Being able to forgo a work promotion or full-time employment in order to care for family members or to be a foster parent were examples given that ran counter to a sense of poverty.
Contributing to community in meaningful ways: Whether through sharing vegetables from a garden, repairing neighbors’ cars, or countless other gestures of assistance, being in a position to help others or contribute to their well-being can provide a sense of abundance that undercuts self-identification with being poor.
As Janice Ikeda, Vibrant Hawaii’s Executive Director describes, the dissonance that emerged between the facts from the ALICE report and the residents’ truths from the listening sessions drove curiosity about the measurement of poverty and struggling households. Who gets to determine what is worth measuring, and who is doing the measuring? What does it mean for communities to be defined by underperformance, as measured in publicly available data? And finally, if data tells a story, who gets to tell the story of our community?
Vibrant Hawaii Data Advances Narrative of Hawaii Island’s Abundance, Rather Than Its Deficits
Via email, Janice shared her perspective on the merits and limitations of ALICE data, as well as the ways in which the listening sessions Vibrant Hawaii conducted informed the coalition’s thinking about what constitutes “data” and what role it has to play in shaping community decisions:
What have you found most useful about the ALICE report (and similar sources), and what have you found most lacking about it?
Janice Ikeda, Executive Director, Vibrant Hawaii
The ALICE report was really useful in providing context to the system that we operate in. It gave the history of the federal poverty level guidelines and an understanding about how outdated it is. In addition, the ALICE report allowed us to have a different conversation with our community. The data within the report was useful to have specific conversations around a living wage, the need for a spectrum of housing options, and the need to raise the thresholds of public assistance programs. The opportunity for growth is for each user of the data to build awareness and acknowledgement that the ALICE report is a snapshot of one measure of the experience of people in our community. It is a singular view and not our entire identity.
How has Vibrant Hawaii reconciled the ALICE data with the listening session results? In other words, how are you hoping to measure the ways that Hawaii Island is thriving, despite the findings from the ALICE report?
What our community taught us is that there is a difference between fact and truth. Our true and complete narrative as a community is waiting to be told through the facts that have yet to be documented and published. In this emerging year of listening and learning, we have been fortunate to connect with Indigenous leaders in the field of data justice and data governance. We have learned from these leaders that we can give ourselves permission to design the measures and capture data for ourselves. This will be a focus of our work in the next year.
How do you see data equity being incorporated into the work of Vibrant Hawaii going forward?
When we asked our community to share with us their vision of a Vibrant Hawaii, the word “access” was spoken more than any other word. What they were talking about is equity. Simply stated: “Get Chance.” A chance to succeed and to have choices. A chance to contribute in a meaningful way from our personal sources of wealth: human, social, natural, and financial capital—to the wealth of our collective, our community.
If the purpose of data is to inform so that [people can] make decisions, and if we want the outcomes of those decisions to contribute to a Hawaii Island where everyone has a chance, then we need to ensure that the principle of equity is woven through every step of the process, from design to analysis to dissemination of the final report.
What do you see as data’s potential in helping achieve the outcomes that Vibrant Hawaii seeks?
Data and data-informed decision making is infused into every piece of our life. Reports about our community, based on data, are powerful. The data about us become infused in mission statements and job descriptions. The data is used as opening statements to convey the purpose of our work and our conversation. Data shapes our perception and what we believe to be true. For this reason, data – multi-faceted, community-driven data: for us, by us, and with us – will definitely help to achieve the outcomes that Vibrant Hawaii seeks.
Joyce Lee-Ibarra is principal of JLI Consulting LLC and a consultant to the Hawaii Data Collaborative.
