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.
Oh gee, there's a surprise.
There's a good example of what the causes of poverty are. The Washington Metropolitan area has an unemployment rate of something like 3.7%. The suburban jobs are easily accessible by subway and/or bus.
But the Washington school system is abysmal. Even the few who graduate are often functionally illiterate. Most of the children are born to unwed teen-age mothers. And over half of the males are in the penal system somehow.
The drug trade is alive and well, but that income isn't counted in these statistics.
The solution to poverty in this country is obvious. Give the kids an education. Tell them to stay off drugs and not have children until they are married and one of the parents has a job. Walter Williams says it; John McWhorter says it; Bill Cosby says it; and now Juan Williams is saying it.
Until we fix the educational system, we're not going to improve a thing.
Deport these illegals and half the problem is solved.
Wonder how the extremely poor correlates with the extremely illegal immigrant.
How many of the kids have iPods or PS2?
When I was a young man, poverty was much less widespread.
And a majority of folks who were classified as "poor" still had morals and self respect.
Then LBJ kicked off the "Great Society"
This led to a major breakdown of the family structure.
Which led us to the mess we have today.
I agree with you completely. LBJ's "Great Society" made men expendable, if not a handicap. Mothers couldn't get benefits like welfare payments or subsidized housing if the father(s) of their babies were around.
How did we ever expect teen-aged girls to raise their boys to be men if they never had one in their lives?
I worked in small villages in China, a thousand miles inland, in the late 1970s. People lived in one-room mud wall buildings, no glass in the windows, earthen floors and thatched roofs. No running water, no electricity, no heating system, no sanitation, no phones. When nature called, you hung your naked bum over the neighborhood honey pot. The village "market" had fly-covered meat on display sitting on the dirt road. Cargo boats were pulled up the Yangtze River by men tugging on tow ropes. The boat loads of bricks were unloaded by children about 6 years old with 50 pound bamboo baskets on their backs. People were assigned to empying the honeypots and pouring the waste onto the fields.
That was POVERTY!
Of course, that's what our Global Warming friends desire for all of us in their zeal to end the consumption of fossil fuel.
Something baffles me, there - the Chinese have probably the second oldest society on earth, very stable, and with rules you can live with.
How come they still live in mud huts?
(Everybody swallow your communism comments - this particular phenomenon predates communism by, I dunno, 10,000 years?)
Why do the chinese, arguably the smartest people on earth (The Bell Curve), still live in freaking mud huts?
I am missing something, here.
Dang. That sounds like a scene right of "The Good Earth!"
"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."
When was Bush elected?
Su casa, mi casa.
People with no trackable income are hard to measure, what's new?
Extreme poverty means the batteries are dead.
We take up a collection from the liberals and give it to the poor, right?
What chance do you think this story would have getting published in 2009?
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