CONVERTED TO SQUARE FEET:
US: 2,300sf
Australia: 2,217sf
Denmark: 1,475sf
France: 1,216sf
Spain: 1,044sf
Ireland: 947sf
UK: 818sf
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?”
I read that the average ‘’poor’’ person in the USA has a higher standard of living than the whole of Europeans do. When I was there in the 50’s they didn’t buy a car with a heater in it. They just bundled up if it was cold out.
Zing!
Hope you know I was being sarcastic. the Rev. Jessie was spouting his Jim Crow drivel about voter I.D. laws. the poor have to have I.D. to get their benefits.
Cop stops a driver in Arkansas. Cop; “You got any I.D.?”
Driver; “’Bout what?”
20% of the people in the country are poor?!!!
What an outrage!
/sarc
See the problem with poor people is that they aren’t taxed enough.
To solve poverty, we should tax the hell out of poor people. Instead we give them tax dollars? Ridiculous.
It’s a well known econnomic fact that if you want LESS of something, then tax MORE of it.
Nobama wants fewer rich people and less wealth in this country. And he is doing a dang good job of of acheiving his goals. What we need is leadership that TAXES poverty. Pretty soon... we’ll have less poor people around.
If my mother was there, she'd have said, "What's the matter, you have a broken arm? The least that you can do is bag your own FREE groceries."
I thought I would throw up. She also has cable. Government provides a nice house for her and her kids. It also has a window air conditioner. We live in an area of the country that if you need air for more than about 2 weeks out of the year, it was a hot summer. The one thing she doesn't own is a car.
RE: The one thing she doesn’t own is a car.
How’s the bus system in your area?
If you live around NYC and Suburbs, you can survive without a car. Buses and trains get you around pretty nicely.
When I was a kid, if I broke something, then I just didn't have it anymore. So I learned not to break things, or fix what I broke.
I'm in IT; I'd love to see the "3 computers that don't work right anymore". A 30-minute tune up likely would have them working fine, although I'd imagine that the user would not be satisfied.
>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.<
Google “Shelby Lee Adams”. You might want to rethink that statement.
I don’t have air conditioning OR cable TV at my house.
So, I’m either poorer than the poor - or the reason I don’t have them is because I am usually AT MY JOB rather than sitting around the house watching TV all day.
Reminds me of the story about a guy stopped for DWI. The officer and his partner decided that a sobriety test was in order. The officer told the driver, “Please say your alphabet to “J”” The driver asked, “Which one of you is Jay?”
My house is only 1550 SQFT, barely bigger than Denmark. I need a McMansion bailout. Where is my Obama cash?
It’s funny, the American fascination with gadgetry. I don’t have any of the things listed above. No car, no TV, no cable, no stereo, no, A.C., no microwave, no blender, no toaster, no computer (this laptop belongs to the school, and my landlady lets me tap onto her internet since she’s next door.) But I’m certainly not poor, I simply don’t want those things. I have a fridge, a crock pot, and a coffee maker. And some lamps. And a fan! And a cheap old cell phone that goes days gathering dust.
RE: I don’t have air conditioning OR cable TV at my house.
Well, I do have air conditioning but living in NY, I only use it maybe 7 or 8 times a year.
And I don’t have Cable myself.
Everything I need to know, I listen to Talk Radio or go to the internet.
Reminds me of the story about a guy stopped for DWI. The officer and his partner decided that a sobriety test was in order. The officer told the driver, “Please say your alphabet to “J”” The driver asked, “Which one of you is Jay?”
Love it!
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