Plugged-In Poverty (Most of America's Poor Have Air-Conditioning, more than Half have Cable)

National Review ^ | 07/26/2011 | Robert Rector

[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?”

[MsLady]

Where she lives she really doesn’t need a car. She lives right in the town. So grocery and so forth is within walking distance. Bus service is limited but, we do have it. It isn’t the greatest thing to have to walk her in the winter though. We get 200” give or take of snow every year.

[linn37]

I have heard people say that being on the government payroll must be nice. I don’t think so. You can’t really do anything. No trips to the park,no vacations,no dinners out. I’ll take my 40 hour a week job and be happy to do what I want.

[ArrogantBustard]

I'll never forget the time I was bagging groceries from our church food bank for a poor single mother who said she had no food in the house. She sat and watched me,

Emphasis added ...

You (or someone like you) produced that food, packaged and shipped it, earned the money to buy it and put it in the food bank, bagged it up and handed it to a physically fit young adult ... who did nothing whatever to get it.

[longtermmemmory]

don’t forget the government has been defining poverty “up” in order to give away mroe free stuff.

[ArrogantBustard]

Government provides a nice house for her and her kids.

No ...

You and I provide a nice house for her and her kids, and are compelled to do so at gunpoint.

[freespirited]

The fact that there are poor people in our country is only a statistical one. Someone has to occupy the lower 20 percent of income earners.

And those in lowest 20% have to be labelled poor in order to keep the vast array of poverty bureaucrats employed.

We will never be rid of "poverty" because so many people have a vested interest continuing it.

[Responsibility2nd]

We will never be rid of "poverty" because so many people have a vested interest continuing it.

 

True. And the same is true for race pimping. Years ago Booker T. Washington said this:

 

There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do do not want to lose their jobs.

 

It's as if Mr. Washington knew that race pimps like Jackson and Sharpton would be around some day.

[Villiany_Inc]

note to self -
read later

[algernonpj]

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.

Not only that. This story is a deflation from the very real damage being done to the middle class, particularly the lower middle class by NWO Globalists in the name of 'free trade'.

The implication is that if the 'poor' are living this well, just imagine how well off the middle class must be.

[MsLady]

Yes your right, and I stand corrected.

[TASMANIANRED]

If everyone were millionaires there would still be a bottom 10%.