Poverty Rate Down Under Bush: Census Bureau

You Big Mouth, You! ^ | March 24, 2004 | Chuck Simmins

[arnoldfwilliams]

---

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

 

Poverty Rate Lower than Clinton Era

Econopundit, Steve Antler graphs the poverty numbers for children and comes to a startling conclusion. Poverty is down. The source data for his graph is the U.S. Census Bureau.

I'M SO CONFUSED. I THOUGHT PEOPLE WERE JUST GETTING POORER AND POORER.

Let's use the same source, the Census Bureau, to look at the percentages of Americans and Americans in families living in poverty:

TERM	AVG % ALL	AVG % FAMILIES
Reagan I	14.7	13.3
Reagan II	13.5	12.0
Bush 41	13.8	12.4
Clinton I	14.3	12.8
Clinton II	12.3	10.7
Bush 43	11.9	10.2

It actually looks like George Bush has the lowest poverty levels in a generation. Not since the end of the Carter years has the percentage of the U.S. population in poverty been so low. Why don't we read that on the front page of the paper?

-- posted by Chuck at Wednesday, March 24, 2004 | E-mail -- Permalink

---

 

[arnoldfwilliams]

Of course, the media won't mention this: it might be good news.

[bushfamfan]

The President can get this info out in campaign speeches, the debates. Kerry and the Demonrats will continue to suppress this kind of info because according to them the sky is falling under President Bush.

[samtheman]

Can't they just redefine poverty to make Bush look bad? How hard is that?

[Patriot11]

According to our Democrat counterparts, this is still the Depression. We are supposed to think soup kitchens and people with dirty feet. Fact is, many people own homes and have computers and everything like that. No, the press will not report this.

[Army Air Corps]

Also, the Dems love to rely on their own sampling numbers rather than the Census Bureau. How many times have you heard the lefties say "our numbers show..." during one of their diatribes? When you present US GOV'T numbers, they charge that you have distorted the data or that you have somehow "cooked the books."

[Moonman62]

According to your chart, Nixon, Carter, Bush(41), and Bush(43) were all bad for the poverty rate. One could probably guess from the chart that the stock market doing well lowers the poverty rate.

[Army Air Corps]

It is easy for them. Look at the graph. If you think like a Dem, you will pick the lowest point on the graph, the early 1970s, and ignore everything beforehand. Then, you scream that poverty is higher than the seventies with the tacit implication that the seventies were bad and that we are doing worse now.

[samtheman]

Or they can just throw the chart away and lie. Like they did in Florida. Accusing the state of "blocking blacks from voting", without a shred of evidence. Without a single person stepping forward and actually testifying that s/he was "blocked".

RATS lie. It's what they do.

[Patriot11]

Yeah, many Dems like to make accusations without backing them up. I never saw any evidence that Bush snorted crack either, where did that come from?

[raloxk]

WELFARE REFORM

[Army Air Corps]

Yep, just like the accusations that Republicans want to make kids starve at school and kick old folks to the curb. All that when we simply reduce the rate of growth! Imagine what would happen if we made REAL cuts in federal spending!

[Army Air Corps]

It came from the diseased imagination of James "ragin' cajun" carvill. If anyone needed mood-levellers, it would be Old Serpent Head.

[ancient_geezer]

Can't they just redefine poverty to make Bush look bad? How hard is that?

Not very easily, too many competing interests are rooted in how it is calculated. The methodology is pretty much set in rock by court cases fighting over the impacts to government programs, benefits, and economic reports from attempted changes to it.

The federal version of the povertyline/threshold is calculated by the census bureau and published in the Federal Register each year.

Read this for more than you would ever want to know about the poverty measure and its history.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/povmeas/papers/orshansky.html

From there they determine howmany folk lay below that threshold for the proverty census.

[q_an_a]

add to the fact that fewer women with children, who had beeen on welfare, did not return to welfare and you have a strange set of other econimic news.

[jla]

^

[thepackn83]

thanks for this post...I will use these stats the next time I hear a Democrat play the class-envy game.

[ApplegateRanch]

Term: Bush 43 AVG % ALL 11.9 AVG % FMILIES 10.2

I'm confused. 11.9 is about 1 in 8.5, but my radio keeps telling that 1 in 5 American children go to bed hungry. Yet, the 11.9% includes adults, noit just children.

Surely a CHARITY wouldn't lie or distort, just to get extra donations, would it? /sarc>