U.S. data shows one in eight Americans in poverty

[E-Nice]

U.S. data shows one in eight Americans in poverty
By Joanne Morrison
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060829/ts_nm/life_usa_poverty_dc



In the world's biggest economy one in eight Americans and almost one in four blacks lived in poverty last year, the U.S. Census Bureau said on Tuesday, releasing a figure virtually unchanged from 2004.

The survey also showed 15.9 percent of the population, or 46.6 million, had no health insurance, up from 15.6 percent in 2004 and the fifth increase in a row.

It was the first year since President George W. Bush took office in 2001 that the poverty rate did not increase. As in past years, the figures showed poverty especially concentrated among blacks and Hispanics.

In all, some 37 million Americans lived below the poverty line, defined as having an annual income below around $10,000 for an individual or $20,000 for a family of four.

The last decline in poverty was in 2000, the final year of Bill Clinton's presidency, when it fell to 11.3 percent.

"It shows that we are spending more money than ever on anti-poverty programs and we haven't done anything to reduce poverty," said Michael Tanner of CATO Institute, a free market think tank in Washington.

Around a quarter of blacks and 21.8 percent of Hispanics were living in poverty. Among whites, the rate edged down to 8.3 percent from 8.7 percent in 2004.

"Among African Americas the problem correlates primarily to the inner-city and single mothers," said Tanner, adding that blacks also suffer disproportionately from poor education and lower quality jobs.

Black median income, at $30,858, was only 61 percent of the median for whites.

Some 17.6 percent of children under 18 and one in five of those under 6 were in poverty, higher than for any other age group.

Real median household income rose by 1.1 percent between to $46,326 from $45,817 -- its first increase since 1999.

The figures contained wide regional variations, ranging from a median household income of $61,672 in New Jersey to $32,938 for Mississippi.

Major cities with the highest proportions of poor people included Cleveland with 32.4 percent and Detroit with 31.4 percent under the poverty line.

[Dionysos]

The moral of the story: don't be black.

[Hey Bubu]

Originally Posted by Dionysos

The moral of the story: don't be black.

Pretty much

[PETA]

executive summary of what "poverty" means from the Heritage Foundation

link to the full text with colorful pie charts and the like - http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1713.cfm

Executive Summary: Understanding Poverty in America
by Robert E. Rector and Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D.
Executive Summary #1713


January 5, 2004

If poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the 35 million people identified as being "in poverty" by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor. While material hardship does exist in the United States, it is quite restricted in scope and severity.

The average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines. The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.
Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.
Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

Of course, the living conditions of the average poor American should not be taken as representing all of the nation's poor: There is a wide range of living conditions among the poor. In contrast to the 25 percent of "poor" households that have cell phones and telephone answering machines, ap-proximately one-tenth of families in poverty have no phone at all. While the majority of poor households do not experience significant material problems, roughly a third do experience at least one problem such as overcrowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty getting medical care.

The good news is that the poverty that does exist in the United States can readily be reduced, particularly among children. There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and their fathers are absent from the home.

In both good and bad economic environments, the typical American poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year--the equivalent of 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year--the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year--nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.

As noted above, father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, nearly three-quarters of the nation's impoverished youth would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

Yet, although work and marriage are reliable ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to encourage work and marriage, the nation's remaining poverty would quickly be reduced. This is, perhaps, the best news about poverty in the United States.

Robert E. Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies and Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., is Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Fellow in Statistical Welfare Research in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.

[Adam D]

I like that the Heritage Foundation was able to do all of that research and completely miss any piece of how poverty rates are calculated.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by Adam D

I like that the Heritage Foundation was able to do all of that research and completely miss any piece of how poverty rates are calculated.

1. Comparison of the average expenditure per person of the lowest quintile in 2001 with the middle quintile in 1973. Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey: Integrated Diary and Interview Survey Data, 1972-73, Bulletin No. 1992, released in 1979, and U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditures in 2001, Report No. 966, April 2003. Figures adjusted for inflation by the personal consumption expenditure index.

2. See Campaign for Human Development, Poverty Pulse, January 2002, at www.usccb.org/cchd/povertyusa/povpulse.htm. Interestingly, only about 1 percent of those surveyed regarded poverty in the terms the government does: as having an income below a specified level.

3. The Census Bureau defines an individual as poor if his or her family income falls below certain specified income thresholds. These thresholds vary by family size. In 2002, a family of four was deemed poor if its annual income fell below $18,556; a family of three was deemed poor if annual income was below $14,702. There are a number of problems with the Census Bureau's poverty figures: Census undercounts income, ignores assets accumulated in prior years, and disregards non-cash welfare such as food stamps and public housing in its official count of income. However, the most important problem with Census figures is that, even if a family's income falls below the official poverty thresholds, the family's actual living conditions are likely to be far higher than the image most Americans have in mind when they hear the word "poverty."

4. U.S. Department of Commerce and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2001; U.S Department of Energy, Housing Characteristics, 2001, Appliances Tables, at www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/consumption.

5. U.S Department of Commerce and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2001, Tables 3-1, 3-14.

6. Ibid., p. 42.

7. Ibid., p. 46.

8. Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York: Dover Press, 1971), pp. 6, 41, 59.

9. U.S. Department of Energy, Housing Characteristics 1993, 1995, pp. 46, 47. The figures in the text refer to total living space, including both heated and non-heated living space.

10. United Nations Centre for Human Settlements and the World Bank, The Housing Indicators Program, Vol. II: Indicator Tables (New York: United Nations, 1993), Table 5.

11. See Katha Pollitt, "Poverty: Fudging the Numbers," The Nation, November 2, 1998. Pollitt argues that it is misleading to compare the living space of poor Americans nationwide to that of average citizens in major cities in other nations, since European cities, in particular, have small housing units that are not representative of their entire nations. However, the author of the United Nations Housing Indicators report asserts that, in most cases, the average housing size in major cities can be taken as roughly representative of the nation as a whole. A comparison of the data in Table 4 and Appendix Table A would appear to confirm this.

12. See, for example, A Survey of Childhood Hunger in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Food Research Action Center, Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project, 1995) and "1997 National Research Study," in Hunger 1997: The Faces and Facts (Chicago, Ill.: America's Second Harvest, 1997).

13. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Household Food Security in the United States in 1995: Summary Report for the Food Security Measurement Project, 1997, p. 5.

14. In all cases, the figures concerning hunger in this paper refer solely to hunger caused by a lack of funds to buy food and do not include hunger that is attributed to any other cause.

15. Mark Nord, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson, Household Food Security in the United States, 2002, U.S. Department of Agriculture, October 2003, p. 7. The numbers in the text were taken from Table 1 of the USDA publication. Many individuals reside in households where at least one family member but not all family members experienced hunger. This is particularly true among families with children where the adults are far more likely than the children to experience hunger. According to Table 1of Household Food Security in the United States, 2002, 9.3 million persons lived in a household where at least one household member experienced hunger; however, not all of these persons experienced hunger themselves. The number of persons who experienced hunger individually was lower: 6.8 million people, including 6.3 million adults and 567,000 children.

[PETA]

con't

16. The numbers of persons identified as hungry throughout this paper correspond to individuals that the USDA identifies as "food insecure with hunger." The USDA also has a second, broader category: "food insecure without hunger." As the term implies, these individuals are not hungry. They may, however, at certain times in the year be forced to eat cheaper foods or a narrower range of foods than those to which they are ordinarily accustomed. According to the USDA, 7.6 percent of all households were "food insecure without hunger" in 2002. Food advocacy groups often inaccurately include the households that are "food insecure without hunger" in the count of households that are deemed hungry.



17. Nord, Andrews, and Carlson, Food Security in the United States, 2002, p. 7. Additional data provided by USDA.



18. Nord, Andrews, and Carlson, Food Security in the United States, 2002, p. 16.



19. Ibid., p. 17.



20. Calculated from USDA food security survey for 2001.



21. C. T. Windham et al., "Nutrient Density of Diets in the USDA Nationwide Food Consumption Survey, 1977-1978: Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Dietary Density," Journal of the American Dietetic Association, January 1983.



22. Interagency Board for Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research, Third Report on Nutrition Monitoring in the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), p. VA 167.



23. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrient Intakes by Individuals in the United States, 1 Day, 1989-91, Nationwide Food Survey Report No. 91-2, 1995.



24. Ibid., Tables 10-1, 10-4. Table 4 in the present paper also provides the "mean adequacy ratio" for various groups. The mean adequacy ratio represents average intake of all the nutriments listed as a percent of RDA. However, in computing mean adequacy, intake values exceeding 100 percent of RDA are counted at 100, since the body cannot use an excess consumption of one nutriment to fill a shortfall of another nutriment.



25. The World Health Organization uses standard height-for-age tables developed by the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department and Health and Human Services.



26. M. de Onis and J. P. Habicht, "Anthropometric Reference Data for International Use: Recommendations from a World Health Organization Expert Committee," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1996, pp. 650-658.



27. Calculation by the authors using National Health and Nutrition Evaluation Survey III data and WHO standard tables for shortness for age. Shortness for age is the result of genetic variation as well as nutritional factors. The World Health Organization standards assume that even in a very well-nourished population, 2.3 percent of children will have heights below the "stunted" cut-off levels due to normal genetic factors. Problems are apparent if the number of short children in a population rises appreciably above that 2.3 percent.



28. Bernard D. Karpinos, "Current Height and Weight of Youths of Military Age," Human Biology, 1961, pp. 336-364. Recent data on young males in poverty provided by the National Center for Health Statistics of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, based on the second National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.



29. Interagency Board for Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research, Third Report on Nutrition Monitoring, Vol. 2, p. VA 219.



30. Calculated from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Survey of Income and Program Participation, Extended Measures of Well-being Module, 1998.



31. Ibid.



32. The Survey of Income and Program Participation, Extended Measures of Well-being Module also contains a question about whether members of the household needed to see a dentist but did not go. Because the question does not specify whether or not the failure to visit the dentist was due to an inability to pay, we did not include the question in this report.



33. Robert E. Rector and Rea S. Hederman, Jr., "The Role of Parental Work in Child Poverty," Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. CDA03-01, January 27, 2003.



34. Robert E. Rector, Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., Patrick F. Fagan, and Lauren R. Noyes, "Increasing Marriage Would Dramatically Reduce Child Poverty," Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. CDA03-06, May 20, 2003.



35. Robert Rector and Patrick F. Fagan, "The Continuing Good News About Welfare Reform," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1620, February 6, 2003.

[Oscuro]

Necessary evil. imo