Poverty in the US and Elsewhere

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"Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money.”

George Carlin

The many are not enslaved because they are poor, they are poor because they are enslaved.

Bertrand Russell

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"If a free society cannot help the many are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." ~ John F. Kennedy inaugural address, January 20, 1961

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Poverty in the US

Our typical view of such phenomena is called “ideographic.” This looks at the individual case. The person on the street.

Another view is called “nomothetic.” This word basically means “law” (nomos) and looks at “general” circumstances. That is, how might this condition be in the social realm, not just for this individual.

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Poverty in the USAs such, we might use our “sociological imagination” as

C. Wright Mills suggested not all that long ago. That is, when a condition applies to an individual only, there is a personal trouble. But when such a condition is affecting many people, then there is a public issue (i.e. a social problem).

For more on this consider reading his work in more detail at http://socialsciences.nsula.edu/assets/Site-Files/The-Promise.pdf `

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Poverty in the US

The stigma and stereotyping of poverty in the United States is intense, and the media, for whatever reasons, does much to perpetuate these negative images.

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Poverty in the USLet’s look at some of the common stereotypes.

(Perhaps your personal experience supports some):

1. Lazy

2. Addicted to alcohol or drugs

3. Prefer welfare to employment (“work the system”)

4. The “Welfare Queen,” who is usually black, drives and Cadillac.

5. The single mother who had more children to extend welfare benefits.

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Poverty in the US

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The Welfare Queen MythThe term "welfare queen" was created by then presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1976 during his 1976 concession speech. He would tell the story of a woman from Chicago's South Side who was arrested for welfare fraud:

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Reagan’s Speech 1976 "She has eighty names, thirty addresses,

twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."

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Reagan’s Speech 1976 Per a New York Times

article Reagan did not have the facts.

In fact the woman he referred to had four aliases, not 89, collected about $8,000, not $150,000.

Regardless, the myth continues.

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WHO REALLY GETS GOVERNMENT AID?

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WHO GETS THE MOST GOVERNMENT AID?

If you expand the definition of "government benefit" to include tax expenditures, many more Americans benefit. There's a long-standing debate about whether to count tax breaks like the mortgage-interest deduction for homeowners or the employer health deduction as a government "benefit." Some economists say that these tax expenditures are no different from actual spending. Others contend that these deductions merely allow people to keep more of their own money.

Yet these tax expenditures added up to about $1.2 trillion in 2011. And they tend to flow disproportionately toward wealthier households:

Washington Post By Brad Plumer September 18, 2012

WHO GETS THE MOST GOVERNMENT AID?

WHO PAYS THE MOST IN TAXES? CORPORATIONS OR YOU?

WHO PAYS THE MOST IN TAXES? CORPORATIONS OR YOU?

How many in poverty are we?

As of 2014, the number of people in the United States who qualify as being in poverty is now about 45 million people.

That is around 15 percent of our population.

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Statistics US Census Bureau cited in HuffingtonPost 09/16/2014

Culture of Poverty Thesis: …[T]hey have neither the knowledge,

the vision nor the ideology to see the similarities between their problems and those of others like themselves elsewhere in the world. In other words, they are not class conscious, although they are very sensitive indeed to status distinctions.

(Lewis 1998 in Wikipedia)

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My Argument:

If, say, the “culture of poverty” thesis is true, that the poor are deliberately lazy and live by a different value system that the rest of the country, then wouldn’t that make the United States the laziest of all the industrialized nations?

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The Number and Rate of the Poverty in the US, 1959-2010

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Could you live on this here in Salinas?

Who are our Poor?

Minorities Children Disabled Single mothers

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Alyssa lives with her parents in Kentucky. She is an only child but her grandmother, uncle, and orphaned cousin live close by. Their small, shabby house, heated only by a wooden stove, is falling apart. The ceiling in Alyssa's bedroom is beginning to cave in. The family would like to buy a trailer if they could afford it. Alyssa's mother works at McDonald's and her father works at Walmart; everything they earn goes towards bringing up their daughter. (http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/11/kids-bedrooms-james-mollison)

Children Under 18 in Poverty

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Category Number (in thousands)

Percent

All children under 18 16,401 22.0

White, non-Hispanic 5,002 12.4

Black 4,817 38.2

Hispanic 6,110 35.0

Asian and Pacific Islander

547 13.3

NOTE: These numbers have gone up quite a bit since 2005

Using The lunch program as a rough proxy for poverty, the Southern Education Foundation reports that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade in the 2012-2013 school year were eligible for the federal program that provides free and reduced-price lunches.

Food Stamps SNAP(Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)

Per GOVT web page: http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/applicant_recipients/facts.htm

It states that it helps low-income people buy the food they need for good health. You may be able to get SNAP benefits if you are:

• Working for low wages or working part-time• Unemployed;• Receiving welfare or other public assistance payments• Elderly or disabled and are low-income;• Homeless.

Poverty Numbers by Race 2009

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• Non-Hispanic Whites: 29.8 million (12.3%)

• Hispanic: 12.3 million (25.3 %)

• African American: 10 million (25.8%)

• Asian & Pacific Islander: 17.5 million (12.5%)

(US Census 2009)

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Women In 2007, 28.3 percent of households

headed by single women were poor. (Read that number again please.)

13.6 percent of households headed by single men and 4.9 percent of married-couple households lived in poverty.

(National Poverty Center)

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Veterans:

About 12% of the adult homeless population are veterans.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that 49,933 veterans are homeless on any given night.

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Veterans: About 1.4 million other veterans,

meanwhile, are considered at risk of homelessness due to poverty, lack of support networks, and dismal living conditions in overcrowded or substandard housing.National Coalition for Homeless Veteranshttp://nchv.org/index.php/news/media/background_and_statistics/

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FAMILY INCOME AND SAT SCORES

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By age 50, 42 percent of Americans will have been in poverty for at least a year.

(Lauer and Lauer 2006)

[It still checks out as of 2010 from a variety of interpretations of census data.]

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Families with children are among the fastest growing group of the homeless.

Later we can look at poverty in the world. For a peek, look at how we compare to many other countries.

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Poverty in the USPerhaps you have heard the song:

“Teenage Immigrant Welfare Mothers on Drugs.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uByGoPGP9wY

Need I say more? Perhaps I should.

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More on shelter, or lack of

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In Sweden the poverty-level is applied to incomes at about 60 percent of the median Swedish income; and in other European countries it varies between 40 and 60 percent.

In other words, in countries where the standards for qualifying as being in poverty are lower than those of the US, the level of poverty is also lower.

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Median income as a measure in the US:

In 1992, $13,000 was the poverty level for families consisting of an elderly couple because the median income for such families was $26,000. But the official poverty figure was only $8,500, about one-third the median income.

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Wealth and Income Distribution

While income (what you earn regularly) is a useful measure of social strata, wealth (what you have) is better.

Let’s look at the US distribution of wealth:

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The wealthiest 1 percent of American households own nearly 40 percent of the nation’s wealth.

The lowest 40 percent own about 1 percent of the nation’s wealth

The poorest 20 percent of Americans receive 5.7 percent, and the richest 20 percent receive 55 percent of all after-tax income—the greatest inequality in the developed world.

(Lauer and Lauer 2006)

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Country Best off 10th Poorest 10th Inequality Index

Sweden 152% 56% 2.7

Netherlands 175 62 2.9

Norway 162 55 2.9

Switzerland 185 54 3.4

France 193 55 3.5

U K 194 51 3.8

Canada 184 46 4.0

Italy 198 49 4.1

United States 206 35 5.9

Gini Index by select developed nations

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GNP Per Capita for Selected Countries

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GDP Per Capita for Selected Countries

Global Poverty

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Two Categories

Absolute Poverty Relative Poverty

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Absolute poverty is a condition in which people do not have adequate resources to met their minimum needs, such as food, water, clothing and shelter.

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Childhood poverty rates in rich countries. UNICEF, 2005

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Absolute Poverty USA

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Relative poverty applies to those for whom the minimum needs have been met, but who still experience a great deal of economic uncertainty. They have few options for the goods they can afford. Also, although they are often working, they are underemployeed.

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Relative Poverty

Relative Poverty is what we my think of as the dominant form in the United States, and indeed, the rest of the so-called “developed” world.

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Relative Poverty UK

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Some Relative Poverty around us now

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More of the absolute stuff USA

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Criterion for Global Poverty

The UNDP (United Nations Development Program) has use as a measure the “less than a dollar a day” criterion.

It estimates that 1.3 billion people meet this measure worldwide.

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Also is the capability poverty measure (CPM) for poverty. It is based upon three criteria:

1 The capability to be well nourished (measured by the proportion of children under the age of five who are underweight.

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2 The capability for healthy reproduction, measured by the proportion of births unattended by trained health personnel.

3 The capability to be educated, measured by female illiteracy.

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Relative Rates of PovertySource: Michael F. Forster,"Measurement of low Income and Poverty in a Perspective of International Comparisons," Occasional Paper No.14. Paris:OECD,1994.

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Country/Year Percent

USA 1986 18.7%

Australia 1985-6 15.7

Canada 1987 15.4

U.K. 1986 12.4

Sweden 1987 12.1

Italy 1986 10.1

France 1984 8.9

Germany 1984-5 8.5

Belgium 1985 5.4

Netherlands 1987 4.7

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▪The fact that the poorest Americans are worse off than the poorest Europeans is confirmed whatever poverty and inequality measure is taken as a basis.

While the average American has a higher living standard than the average resident in the other countries, this does not hold for the entire spectrum of the income distribution.

Furthermore, the levels and duration of poverty is higher in the United States and the United Kingdom than in Continental European countries: more people experience poverty and stay longer in poverty in US and UK.

(OECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)

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2 Minute Writing:

Would you pay more in taxes to eliminate poverty?

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