Let me begin by stating that this post has been severely plagiarized from a report by Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield.
Second, since I’m being honest, I am someone who grew up a welfare kid, was homeless for several months and am an immigrant, all of which have made me very passionate about issues such as poverty. But I’m also an untrusting person, viewing much of what is sermonized to me as bullshit and misinformation so for that reason I double checked the statistics below and they seem to be on point.
The word “poverty” elicits visions of destitution for many individuals. The poverty stricken being unable to provide their family with nutritious food, clothing and shelter. Yet if poverty means lacking life's essentials, relatively few of the more than 30 million people identified as being "in poverty" by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor. Material hardship definitely exists in the United States, but its scope and severity tends to be overstated. Some 70 percent of poor households reported that during the course of the year (2009), they were able to meet “all essential expenses,” including mortgage, rent, utility bills, and medical care.
Their living standards are far different from the images of dire deprivation promoted by activists and the mainstream media. Those institutions like to use annual Census reports not only to exaggerate current poverty, but also suggest that the number of poor persons and their living conditions have remained stagnant for four decades or more. In reality, the Census as well as other surveys and reports indicate that the living conditions of poor Americans have shown significant improvement over time.
Obviously a range of living conditions exists within the poverty population. The average poor family does not represent every poor family and while most poor families are well housed, a small minority is homeless. In discussions about poverty, however, misunderstanding and exaggeration are commonplace. Over the long term, exaggeration has the potential to promote a substantial misallocation of limited resources. In addition, exaggeration and misinformation obscure the nature, extent, and causes of real material deprivation, thereby hampering the development of well-targeted, effective programs to reduce the problem. Poverty is an issue of serious social concern, and accurate information about that problem is always essential in crafting public policy.
The two charts below serve as a comparison between the quantities of amenities that all US households have and the respected amenities that households labeled as poor posses. The information was gathered through the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), which the Department of Energy has conducted regularly since 1980.
Living conditions can be analyzed by creating a household amenity scale based on the 30 items listed in Chart 1. Thus, a household’s amenity score can range from 0 to 30. A household that responded negatively to all 30 items would have an amenity score of zero, a household that responded affirmatively to half the items would have an amenity score of 15, and a household that answered affirmatively to all 30 items would have a score of 30.
Chart 3 provides the cumulative distribution of amenity scores for all U.S. households in 2005. The median amenity score for all households is 19. Analysis of poor households revealed that they had a median household amenity score of 14. The median poor household had five fewer amenities, specifically; the typical poor household lacked the following items: a personal computer, Internet access, a computer printer, a dishwasher, and a cell phone. However, poor families with children have more conveniences and amenities than other poor families. The median amenity score for poor families with children was 16.
Because the RECS has reported on the living conditions of the poor for several decades, it is a useful tool for charting the improvement in living conditions among the poor over time. Chart 4 shows the percentage of all households and the percentage of poor households that had any type of air conditioning between 1970 and 2005. Chart 5 shows the percentage of all households and the percentage of poor households that had central air conditioning between 1970 and 2005. Finally, Chart 6 shows the share of all households and the share of poor households that had a personal computer from 1990 to 2005
Charts 4, 5, and 6 indicate a common pattern. The share of poor households that have a given amenity tends to equal the share of all U.S. households that had the same amenity 10 to 15 years earlier. There seems to be a general lag effect in which poor households acquire a given amenity roughly a dozen years after the general population acquires it.
On average, the poor are well nourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children. In most cases, it is well above recommended norms. Poor children consume more meat than higher-income children consume, and their protein intake averages 100 percent above government recommended levels. Chart 7 records the answers given by households about their food intakes.
Temporary food shortages have increased during the current recession but still remain atypical among poor households. During 2009, less than one poor household in five experienced even a single instance of “reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns” due to a lack of financial resources.
While the use of food pantries and emergency kitchens has increased during the current recession, poor families generally did not use charity food pantries or soup kitchens. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that only one poor family in five took food from a food pantry even once during all of 2009. Far fewer ate at a food kitchen.
In the whole U.S. population, 5.6 million households (4.8 percent of all households) used a food pantry at any point during 2009. Far fewer ate meals at a soup kitchen. Only 625,000 of all U.S. households (0.5 percent) had a member who ate a meal in a free-food kitchen at any time in 2009.
As for living conditions of poor families, government conducted surveys present the following statistics. Forty-three percent of all poor households 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. Nearly all of the houses and apartments of the poor are in good condition. According to the government’s data, only one in 10 has moderate physical problems. Only 2 percent of poor domiciles have “severe” physical problems, the most common of which is sharing a bathroom with another household living in the building.
Fortunately, the number of homeless Americans has not increased during the current recession. Of course, to the families experiencing homelessness, their comparative infrequency is irrelevant. To a family that has lost its home and is living in a homeless shelter, the fact that only 0.5 percent of families shared this experience in 2009 is no comfort. The distress and fear for the future that the family experiences are real and devastating. Public policy must deal with that distress. However, accurate information about the extent and severity of social problems is imperative for the development of effective public policy
The 2009 Annual Homeless Assessment Report published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) states that on a given night in 2009, some 643,000 persons in the U.S. were homeless (without permanent domicile). This means that at any given time, one out of 470 persons in the general population or one out of 70 persons with incomes below the poverty level was homeless.
Moreover, two-thirds of these 643,000 homeless persons were residing in emergency shelters or transitional housing. 240,000 were without shelter. At any point in 2009, roughly one person out of 1,250 in the general population or one out of 180 poor persons was homeless in the literal sense of being on the street and without shelter.
However, the transitional nature of homelessness means that many more people become temporarily homeless over the course of a year than are homeless at any single point in time. Thus, HUD reports that 1.56 million persons resided in an emergency shelter or transitional housing at least one night during 2009. The year-round total of individuals who ever stayed in a shelter or transitional housing was nearly four times larger than the 403,000 who resided in such facilities on an average night.
Based on the year-round data on shelter use, roughly one person in 195 in the general population resided in emergency shelter or transitional housing for at least one night during a full 12-month period. Roughly one in 25 poor persons (4 percent of all poor persons) resided in an emergency shelter or transitional housing for at least one night during the full year.
Nonetheless, each year, the U.S. Census Bureau issues a report claiming that over 35 million Americans live in poverty. The annual Census poverty report is flawed in two respects.
First, the report provides no information on the actual living conditions of the persons identified as poor. It simply states that a specified number of persons are poor without giving any information on what poverty means in the real world. A detailed description of the living conditions of the poor would greatly enhance public understanding. In fact, without a detailed description of living conditions, public discussions on poverty are meaningless.
Second, the Census report massively undercounts the economic resources provided to poor people. The Census asserts that a household is poor if its “money income” falls below a specified threshold. In 2009, the poverty income threshold for a family of four was $21,756. However, in counting the money income of households, the Census ignores virtually the entire welfare state. For example, there are over 70 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and low-income persons. Major means-tested welfare programs include Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; Supplemental Security Income; the Earned Income Tax Credit; food stamps; the Women, Infants, and Children food program; public housing; and Medicaid. (Social Security and Medicare are not means-tested welfare programs.)
In 2008, federal and state governments spent $714 billion on means-tested welfare programs, but the Census counted only about 4 percent of this as “money income” for purposes of determining whether a household was poor
In fact, the U.S. Department of Labor finds that the lowest-income one-fifth of households appear to spend $1.87 for every $1.00 of income that the Census says these households have. If the free medical care and public housing subsidies given to these households were counted, the gap between expenditure and income would be even greater.
In conclusion the average individuals tend to combine two incompatible, arguably false, ideas: that poverty in America is widespread, affecting as many as one in seven Americans, and that being poor in this country means serious material deprivation. The fusion of these two notions leads to a profound misrepresentation of the actual living conditions in the nation.
This becomes a major problem when formulating effective public policy, which is greatly driven by public opinion, on the issue. It matters a great deal whether one in seven households or one in 500 households live in such conditions in terms of allocation of money and the types of programs that might best serve those in need.
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