Posted on 03/02/2007 3:11:24 PM PST by MovementConservative
WASHINGTON - The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen. A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of the 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty.
A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.
The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.
The review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.
The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind.
At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps to explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.
These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975.
"What appears to be taking place is that, over the long term, you have a significant permanent underclass that is not being impacted by anti-poverty policies," said Michael Tanner, director of Health and Welfare Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, disagreed.
"It doesn't look like a growing permanent underclass," said Sherman, whose organization has chronicled the growth of deep poverty. "What you see in the data are more and more single moms with children who lose their jobs and who aren't being caught by a safety net anymore."
The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that, in a given month, only 10 percent of severely poor Americans received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in 2003 - the latest year available - and that only 36 percent received food stamps.
The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown "more than any other segment of the population," according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
"That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began," said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, who co-authored the study. "We're not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we're seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty."
The growth, which leveled off in 2005, in part reflects how hard it is for low-skilled workers to earn their way out of poverty in an unstable job market that favors skilled and educated workers. It also suggests that social programs aren't as effective as they once were at catching those who fall into economic despair.
About one in three severely poor people are under 17, and nearly two out of three are female. Female-headed families with children account for a large share of the severely poor.
According to census data, nearly two out of three people in severe poverty are white (10.3 million, including 6.9 million non-Hispanic whites). Severely poor blacks (4.3 million) are more than three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be in deep poverty, while extremely poor Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) are more than twice as likely.
Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, has a higher concentration of severely poor people - 10.8 percent in 2005 - than any of the 50 states, topping even hurricane-ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana, which had 9.3 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively. Nearly six of 10 poor District residents are in extreme poverty.
Severe poverty is most pronounced near the Mexican border and in some areas of the South, where 6.5 million severely poor residents are struggling to find work as manufacturing jobs disappear.
The Midwestern Rust Belt and areas of the Northeast also have been hard hit by numerous plant closings.
At the same time, low-skilled immigrants with impoverished family members are increasingly drawn to the South and Midwest to work in meat packing, food processing and agriculture.
I demand a video walkthrough of the abode of 10 randomly selected severely poor families. It must be completely random. Oh, yes, and the register tapes from their last shopping trip. And the names of the fathers of the children.
They are probably illegal aliens...
Sorry, I don't believe this report for an instant.
Total BS, it never includes so called transfer payments from the US government complements of all taxpayers. They are really making about 35k when you figure that in.
On the other hand, the nanny state and creeping socialists are growing quite wealthy.
In this country (at least among citizens) "poverty" means only having one color TV."Severe poverty" means that you only have a black and white TV.
I remember hearing some guy from India say he would like to live in America - because all of the poor people are fat
And only one ipod.
How about... same old McClatchy horsesh*t?
The phrase "more and more single moms" caught my eye. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
Obviously, government is failing in its duty to be father to all those carelessly conceived children.
Not much thought on this issue. The biggest factor in poverty, in my opinion, are liberal policies that negatively impact job opportunities and education.
Liberal immigration policies probably contribute to poverty statistics, as many illegal immigrant families, and those who live on the fringe of society intentionally live off of the grid, and thus are counted as statistics who have fallen through the cracks in our safety net programs.
It seems to me that Republicans in general do not care about the poor.
Democrats, on the other hand, actively keep the poor, poor so they continue to be a captive voting block.
The poor are pretty much screwed.
There is an opportunity for Republicans to solve a societal ill should anyone in the party care to address the issue.
Barbara Streisand!
No kidding - I can remember a time in my childhood, we had no plumbing, no money for charcoal for heat, and the food was getting pretty scarce.
I wonder if the fat welfare queens have ever really seen hunger?
Everyone ive everseen on welfare has a color TV and basic cable and a dvd player and a playstation. Theres a reason they stay poor
First of all I do not believe the article. A family of four that makes $190.00 per week is making less than the minimum wage unless they are working as waiters, food servers or others who get most of their money from tips than something is wrong with the numbers. Assume that both are working for the minimum and they should be getting approximately $532 per week and approximately $27,664 per year not to include food stamps, rent assistance and tax returns for low income people. And most states have a minimum wage more than the national minimum wage. So there is something wrong with the article and I would assume that it is being written so that the Democrats will have campaign lies for 2008.
I think it's where you only have one zoot suit, only two pairs of loose tennis shoes, and no ho.
And, of course, the number of severely poverty stricken people has risen sharply since 2000, just as homelessness becomes a phenomenon much more reported upon soon after a Republican becomes President, having lain relatively dormant during a Democrat's tenure.
Hunger is when you smeel meat cooking, and you throw up, because you haven't seen meat in years.
Oil shortage? Who can afford oil, anyway?
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