Posted on 07/26/2011 8:00:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Census Bureau reported last fall that 43 million Americans — one in seven of us — were poor. But what is poverty in America today?
The most recent government data show that more than half of the families defined as poor by the Census Bureau have a computer in the home. More than three of every four poor families have air conditioning, almost two-thirds have cable or satellite television, and 92 percent have microwaves.
How poor are America’s poor? The typical poor family has at least two color TVs, a VCR, and a DVD player. One-third have a wide-screen, plasma, or LCD TV. And the typical poor family with children has a video-game system such as Xbox or PlayStation.
Are these government numbers a fluke? Perhaps they’re artificially inflated because working-class families — with lots of conveniences in their homes — have lost jobs in the recession and temporarily joined the ranks of the poor?
Nope. That’s not what drives these numbers. Instead, the broad array of modern conveniences in the homes of the poor is the result of many decades of steady improvement in their living standards.
Year by year, the poor tend to be better off. Consumer items that were luxuries or significant purchases for the middle class a few decades ago have become commonplace in poor households.
In part, this is because of the normal downward trend in prices that sets in after consumer items are introduced. Initially, new products tend to be expensive and affordable only to the affluent. Over time, prices fall, and the products saturates the entire population — including poor households. As a rule of thumb, poor households tend to obtain modern conveniences about a dozen years after the middle class.
Liberals use the declining relative prices of many amenities to argue that it is no big deal that poor households have air conditioning, computers, microwaves, and cable or satellite TV. They contend that even though most poor families have a house full of modern conveniences, the average poor family still suffers from real deprivation in basic needs such as food and housing.
Really? Let’s look at housing.
The typical news story about poverty features a homeless family with kids sleeping in the back of a minivan. But government data show that only one in 70 poor persons are homeless.
Another common media image of poverty is a despondent family living in a dilapidated mobile home. But only a tenth of the poor live in trailers; the rest live in houses or apartments, many of which are in good repair. The poor are rarely overcrowded. In fact, the average poor American has more living space than the average non-poor European.
How about hunger? Activists proclaim, “At the end of every day, 17 million children go to bed hungry.” TV news reports wail that America faces a “hunger crisis” in which “nearly one in four kids” is hungry.
But the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which conducts the nation’s food-consumption and hunger survey, says otherwise. The USDA reports that 988,000 children (or 1.3 percent of all American children) personally experienced very low food security — which means “reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns” — at any point in 2009.
During the full course of the year, only one child in 67 was reported “hungry,” even temporarily, because the family couldn’t afford enough food. Ninety-nine percent of children did not skip a single meal during 2009 because of lack of financial resources.
The USDA also reports that there is no difference in quality of diet between children from high- and low-income homes.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that no poor family faces temporary food shortages. If food budgets get tight at the end of the month, adults cut back their own food consumption while sparing their kids.
Still, the USDA reports that during all of 2009, less than one poor household in five experienced temporary “reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns” for lack of financial resources.
Eating too much, not too little, is the major dietary problem faced by poor adults. The majority of poor adults, like the majority of other Americans, are overweight.
None of this means America’s poor live in the lap of luxury. The lifestyle of the typical poor family certainly isn’t opulent. But it is equally far from the images of stark deprivation purveyed by activists and the mainstream media.
If we as a nation are ever to have a sound anti-poverty policy, it must be based on accurate information on the extent, severity, and causes of actual deprivation. Exaggeration and misinformation will benefit neither society, the taxpayer, nor the poor.
— Robert Rector is senior research fellow in domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation (heritage.org) and co-author of the new report “Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What Is Poverty in the United States Today?”
But they don’t have I.D. How sad.
these stories make you mad in a way - but they are also kind of silly in another way.. if you had built up possessions over years of working and lose your job, you don’t automatically sell everything you have. you are now poor, but you have “things”.
I know the ghetto queens exist and live “large” on their gubmint checks, but it is kind of ludicrous to think just because someone loses their job, they would cut their ac off or sell their xbox immediately.
RE: But they don’t have I.D. How sad.
Tell them to walk a few blocks and get one.
I'm not sure that he AC stat means much...some places in the US, you don't need it. I don't have one.
welfare bttt
Among all the statistics regarding poor and the amenities they are given, this tidbit of info is very telling.
If 32.2% of households have more than 2 TVs, what percentage has at least 1 TV? 100%?
My wife and I didn't own a television for the first year of our married life, because we couldn't afford one and had no established credit. We did without and spent our money on food, transportation and a roof over our heads. It never occurred to us that someone else should pay for our necessities. Yet we never considered ourselves poor. We were middle-class people with middle-class values, working our way up.
Rock on.
As long as we can keep borrowing money from China to pay their A/C bills, everything will be fine... :)
How many of the “poor” have those ghetto vehicles, which they spend money on to have the blasting sound system, wheel spinners, and other accessories? They didn’t start with an old car and fix it up. Many are late model SUVs.
We could trade anecdotes all day long, but I think a good point is that the “poor” in this country are fairly well taken care of. The poor in Appalachia no longer have outhouses or live in cabins such as Loretta Lynn lived in.
As noted, very few of the poor are homeless, though during Republican administrations, the MSM showcase stories of such people.
The poor are having basic needs taken care of. Sad to say, some personal behaviors, such as their embrace of the “baby mama” culture, the drug culture, and the gang culture, are hurting their lives far more than a lack of monetary resources.
Social programs are not about “helping the poor”.
They are primarily about getting ‘rat politicians elected,
and secondarily about making those who vote for the ‘rat pols feel good about themselves for “caring”.
RE: Among all the statistics regarding poor and the amenities they are given, this tidbit of info is very telling.
You want to see crowded? You ought to go to the prosperous city of Hongkong. The average HK family lives on less than 150 square feet. And note -— THEY ARE NOT CONSIDERED POOR !!
The average per capita income of HK is greater than their former Colonial Masters, the UK.
Anybody who thinks they’re “poor” in this country, needs to spend a month in Haiti, they’ll come back to the US with a whole new perspective.
You didn’t have a TV? Oh my gosh. So you missed out on watching liberal news and watching entertainment shows with liberal propaganda as part of the plot lines. Heck maybe you were better off in a way.
32.2% have more than 2 TVs.
I’m intuiting an inverse causal relationship here - the more TVs you own, the poorer you become.
And “the poor” often take multiple (lavish) vacations a year,
whilst those who are paying for those vacations might go every 5 years (or more) on a driving trip for the weekend.
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