This key research from 2004 has been updated in Robert
Rector’s new paper, How
Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the "Plague" of Poverty
in America
Each year, the U.S. Census Bureau counts the number of
"poor" persons in the U.S. In 2005, the Bureau found 37
million "poor" Americans. Presidential candidate John
Edwards claims that these 37 million Americans currently
"struggle with incredible poverty." Edwards asserts that
America's poor, who number "one in eight of us…do not have
enough money for the food, shelter, and clothing they need," and
are forced to live in "terrible" circumstances.However, an
examination of the living standards of the 37 million persons, whom
the government defines as "poor," reveals that what Edwards
calls "the plague"of American poverty might not be as
"terrible" or "incredible" as candidate Edwards
contends.
Poverty
is an important and emotional issue. Last year, the Census Bureau
released its annual report on poverty in the United States declaring
that there were nearly 35 million poor persons living in this country
in 2002, a small increase from the preceding year. To understand
poverty in America, it is important to look behind these numbers--to
look at the actual living conditions of the individuals the government
deems to be poor.
For
most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution: an
inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and
reasonable shelter. But only a small number of the 35 million persons
classified as "poor" by the Census Bureau fit that
description. While real material hardship certainly does occur, it is
limited in scope and severity. Most of America's "poor" live
in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or well-off
just a few generations ago. Today, the expenditures per person of the
lowest-income one-fifth (or quintile) of households equal those of the
median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for
inflation.
The
following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the
Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:
-
Forty-six
percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The
average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census
Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a
garage, and a porch or patio.
-
Seventy-six
percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30
years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed
air conditioning.
-
Only
6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds
have more than two rooms per person.
-
The
average poor American has more living space than the average
individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other
cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average
citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
-
Nearly
three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or
more cars.
-
Ninety-seven
percent of poor households have a color television; over half own
two or more color televisions.
-
Seventy-eight
percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or
satellite TV reception.
-
Seventy-three
percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a
third have an automatic dishwasher.
As a
group, America's poor are far from being chronically undernourished.
The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is
virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and, in most
cases, is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume
more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein
intakes 100 percent above recommended levels. Most poor children today
are, in fact, supernourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch
taller and 10 pounds heavier that the GIs who stormed the beaches of
Normandy in World War II.
While
the poor are generally well-nourished, some poor families do
experience hunger, meaning a temporary discomfort due to food
shortages. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 13
percent of poor families and 2.6 percent of poor children experience
hunger at some point during the year. In most cases, their hunger is
short-term. Eighty-nine percent of the poor report their families have
"enough" food to eat, while only 2 percent say they
"often" do not have enough to eat.
Overall,
the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air
conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and
a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV
reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain
medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By
his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds
in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this
individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular
images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and
politicians.
Of
course, the living conditions of the average poor American should not
be taken as representing all the poor. There is actually a wide range
in living conditions among the poor. For example, over a quarter of
poor households have cell phones and telephone answering machines,
but, at the other extreme, approximately one-tenth have no phone at
all. While the majority of poor households do not experience
significant material problems, roughly a third do experience at least
one problem such as overcrowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty
getting medical care.
The
best news is that remaining poverty can readily be reduced further,
particularly among children. There are two main reasons that American
children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and fathers are
absent from the home.
In
good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is
supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16
hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000
hours per year--the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week
throughout the year--nearly 75 percent of poor children would be
lifted out of official poverty.
Father
absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of
poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional
1.3 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married
the fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately
be lifted out of poverty.
While
work and marriage are steady ladders out of poverty, the welfare
system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food
stamps, public housing, and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and
penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to encourage work
and marriage, remaining poverty would drop quickly.
What
Is Poverty?
For
most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution:
an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and
reasonable shelter. For example, the "Poverty Pulse" poll
taken by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development in 2002 asked
the general public the question: "How would you describe being
poor in the U.S.?" The overwhelming majority of responses
focused on homelessness, hunger or not being able to eat properly,
and not being able to meet basic needs.
But
if poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and
clothing for a family, relatively few of the 35 million people
identified as being "in poverty" by the Census Bureau
could be characterized as poor.
While material hardship does exist in the
United States, it is quite restricted in scope and severity. The
average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a
living standard far higher than the public imagines.
Ownership
of Property and Amenities Among the Poor
Table
1 shows the ownership of property and consumer
durables among poor households. The data are taken
from the American Housing Survey for 2001, conducted
by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development and the Census Bureau, and the
Residential Energy Consumption Survey conducted by
the U.S. Department of Energy.
As
the table shows, some 46 percent of poor households
own their own home. The typical home owned by the
poor is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half
baths. It has a garage or carport and a porch or
patio and is located on a half-acre lot. The house
was constructed in 1967 and is in good repair. The
median value of homes owned by poor households was
$86,600 in 2001 or 70 percent of the median value of
all homes owned in the United States.
Some
73 percent of poor households own a car or truck;
nearly a third own two or more cars or trucks. Over
three-quarters have air conditioning; by contrast,
30 years ago, only 36 percent of the general U.S.
population had air conditioning. Nearly
three-quarters of poor households own microwaves; a
third have automatic dishwashers.
Poor
households are well-equipped with modern
entertainment technology. It should come as no
surprise that nearly all (97 percent) poor
households have color TVs, but more than half
actually own two or more color televisions.
One-quarter own large-screen televisions, 78 percent
have a VCR or DVD player, and almost two-thirds have
cable or satellite TV reception. Some 58 percent own
a stereo. More than a third have telephone answering
machines, while a quarter have personal computers.
While these numbers do not suggest lives of luxury,
they are notably different from conventional images
of poverty.
Housing
Conditions
A
similar disparity between popular conceptions and
reality applies to the housing conditions of the
poor. Most poor Americans live in houses or
apartments that are relatively spacious and in good
repair. As Chart 1 shows, 54 percent of poor
households live in single-family homes, either
unattached single dwellings or attached units such
as townhouses. Another 36.4 percent live in
apartments, and 9.6 percent live in mobile homes.
Housing
Space
Both
the overall U.S. population and the poor in
America live, in general, in very spacious
housing. As Table 2 shows, 70 percent of all U.S.
households have two or more rooms per tenant.
Among the poor, this figure is 68 percent.
Crowding
is quite rare; only 2.5 percent of all households
and 5.7 percent of poor households are crowded
with more than one person per room.
By contrast, social reformer
Jacob Riis, writing on tenement living conditions
around 1890 in New York City, described crowded
families living with four or five persons per room
and some 20 square feet of living space per
person.
Housing
space can also be measured by the number of square
feet per person. The Residential Energy
Consumption survey conducted by the U.S.
Department of Energy shows that Americans have an
average of 721 square feet of living space per
person. Poor Americans have 439 square feet.
Reasonably comparable
international square-footage data are provided by
the Housing Indicator Program of the United
Nations Centre for Human Settlements, which
surveyed housing conditions in major cities in 54
different nations. This survey showed the United
States to have by far the most spacious housing
units, with 50 percent to 100 percent more square
footage per capita than city dwellers in other
industrialized nations.
America's
poor compare favorably with the general population
of other nations in square footage of living
space. The average poor American has more square
footage of living space than does the average
person living in London, Paris, Vienna, and
Munich. Poor Americans have nearly three times the
living space of average urban citizens in
middle-income countries such as Mexico and Turkey.
Poor American households have seven times more
housing space per person than the general urban
population of very-low-income countries such as
India and China. (See Appendix Table A for more
detailed information.)
Some
critics have argued that the comparisons in Table
3 are misleading.
These critics claim that U.S.
housing in general cannot be compared to housing
in specific European cities such as Paris or
London because housing in these cities is
unusually small and does not represent the
European housing stock overall. To assess the
validity of this argument, Table 4 presents
national housing data for 15 West European
countries. These data represent the entire
national housing stock in each of the 15
countries. In general, the national data on
housing size are similar to the data on specific
European cities presented in Table 3 and Appendix
Table A.
As Table 4
shows, U.S. housing (with an average size of 1,875
square feet per unit) is nearly twice as large as
European housing (with an average size of 976
square feet per unit.) After adjusting for the
number of persons in each dwelling unit, Americans
have an average of 721 square feet per person,
compared to 396 square feet for the average
European.
The
housing of poor Americans (with an average of
1,228 square feet per unit) is smaller than that
of the average American but larger than that of
the average European (who has 976 square feet per
unit). Overall, poor Americans have an average of
439 square feet of living space per person, which
is as much as or more than the average citizen in
most West European countries. (This comparison is
to the average European, not poor Europeans.)
Housing
Quality
Of
course, it might be possible that the housing of
poor American households could be spacious but
still dilapidated or unsafe. However, data from
the American Housing Survey indicate that such
is not the case. For example, the survey
provides a tally of households with "severe
physical problems." Only a tiny portion of
poor households and an even smaller portion of
total households fall into that category.
The
most common "severe problem,"
according to the American Housing Survey, is a
shared bathroom, which occurs when occupants
lack a bathroom and must share bathroom
facilities with individuals in a neighboring
unit. This condition affects about 1 percent of
all U.S. households and 2 percent of all poor
households. About one-half of 1 percent (0.5
percent) of all households and 2 percent of poor
households have other "severe physical
problems." The most common are repeated
heating breakdowns and upkeep problems.
The
American Housing Survey also provides a count of
households affected by "moderate physical
problems." A wider range of households
falls into this category--9 percent of the poor
and nearly 5 percent of total households.
However, the problems affecting these units are
clearly modest. While living in such units might
be disagreeable by modern middle-class
standards, they are a far cry from Dickensian
squalor. The most common problems are upkeep,
lack of a full kitchen, and use of unvented oil,
kerosene or gas heaters as the primary heat
source. (The last condition occurs almost
exclusively in the South.)
Hunger
and Malnutrition in America
There
are frequent charges of widespread hunger and
malnutrition in the United States.
To understand these assertions,
it is important, first of all, to distinguish
between hunger and the more severe problem of
malnutrition. Malnutrition (also called
undernutrition) is a condition of reduced health due
to a chronic shortage of calories and nutriments.
There is little or no evidence of poverty-induced
malnutrition in the United States.
Hunger
is a far less severe condition: a temporary but real
discomfort caused by an empty stomach. The
government defines hunger as "the uneasy or
painful sensation caused by lack of food."
While hunger due to a lack of
financial re-sources does occur in the United
States, it is limited in scope and duration.
According to the USDA, on a typical day, fewer than
one American in 200 will experience hunger due to a
lack of money to buy food.
The hunger rate rises somewhat
when examined over a longer time period; according
to the USDA, some 6.9 million Americans, or 2.4
percent of the population, were hungry at least once
during 2002.
Nearly all hunger in the United
States is short-term and episodic rather than
continuous.
Some
92 percent of those who experienced hunger in 2002
were adults, and only 8 percent were children.
Overall, some 567,000 children, or 0.8 percent of
all children, were hungry at some point in 2002. In
a typical month, roughly one child in 400 skipped
one or more meals because the family lacked funds to
buy food.
Not
only is hunger relatively rare among U.S. children,
but it has declined sharply since the mid-1990s. As
Chart 2 shows, the number of hungry children was cut
by a third between 1995 and 2002. According to the
USDA, in 1995, there were 887,000 hungry children:
by 2002, the number had fallen to 567,000.
Overall,
some 97 percent of the U.S. population lived in
families that reported they had "enough food to
eat" during the entire year, although not
always the kinds of foods they would have preferred.
Around 2.5 percent stated their families
"sometimes" did not have "enough to
eat" due to money shortages, and one-half of 1
percent (0.5 percent) said they "often"
did not have enough to eat due to a lack of funds.
(See Chart 3.)
Hunger
and Poverty
Among
the poor, the hunger rate was obviously higher:
During 2002, 12.8 percent of the poor lived in
households in which at least one member
experienced hunger at some point.
Among poor children, 2.4
percent experienced hunger at some point in the
year.
Overall, most poor households
were not hungry and did not experience food
shortages during the year.
When
asked, some 89 percent of poor households reported
they had "enough food to eat" during the
entire year, although not always the kinds of food
they would prefer. Around 9 percent stated they
"sometimes" did not have enough to eat
because of a lack of money to buy food. Another 2
percent of the poor stated that they
"often" did not have enough to eat due
to a lack of funds.
(See Chart 3.)
Poverty
and Malnutrition
It
is widely believed that a lack of financial
resources forces poor people to eat low-quality
diets that are deficient in nutriments and high in
fat. However, survey data show that nutriment
density (amount of vitamins, minerals, and protein
per kilocalorie of food) does not vary by income
class.
Nor do the poor consume
higher-fat diets than do the middle class; the
percentage of persons with high fat intake (as a
share of total calories) is virtually the same for
low-income and upper-middle-income persons.
Overconsumption of calories in
general, however, is a major problem among the poor,
as it is within the general U.S. population.
Examination
of the average nutriment consumption of Americans
reveals that age and gender play a far greater role
than income class in determining nutritional intake.
For example, the nutriment intakes of adult women in
the upper middle class (with incomes above 350
percent of the poverty level) more closely resemble
the intakes of poor women than they do those of
upper-middle-class men, children, or teens.
The average nutriment
consumption of upper-middle-income preschoolers, as
a group, is virtually identical with that of poor
preschoolers but not with the consumption of adults
or older children in the upper middle class.
This
same pattern holds for adult males, teens, and most
other age and gender groups. In general, children
aged 0-11 years have the highest average level of
nutriment intakes relative to the recommended daily
allowance (RDA), followed by adult and teen males.
Adult and teen females have the lowest level of
intakes. This pattern holds for all income classes.
Nutrition
and Poor Children
Government
surveys provide little evidence of widespread
undernutrition among poor children; in fact, they
show that the average nutriment consumption among
the poor closely resembles that of the upper middle
class. For example, children in families with
incomes below the poverty level actually consume
more meat than do children in families with incomes
at 350 percent of the poverty level or higher
(roughly $65,000 for a family of four in today's
dollars).
Table
5 shows the average intake of protein, vitamins, and
minerals as a percentage of the recommended daily
allowance among poor and middle-class children at
various age levels.
The intake of nutriments is
very similar for poor and middle-class children and
is generally well above the recommended daily level.
For example, the consumption of protein (a
relatively expensive nutriment) among poor children
is, on average, between 150 percent and 267 percent
of the RDA.
When
shortfalls of specific vitamins and minerals appear
(for example, among teenage girls), they tend to be
very similar for the poor and the middle class.
While poor teenage girls, on average, tend to
underconsume vitamin E, vitamin B-6, calcium,
phosphorus, magnesium, iron, and zinc, a virtually
identical underconsumption of these same nutriments
appears among upper- middle-class girls. Poor
Children's Weight and Stature
On
average, poor children are very well-nourished, and
there is no evidence of widespread significant
undernutrition. For example, two indicators of
undernutrition among the young are
"thinness" (low weight for height) and
stuntedness (low height for age). These problems are
rare to nonexistent among poor American children.
The
generally good health of poor American children can
be illustrated by international comparisons. Table 6
provides data on children's size based on the World
Health Organization (WHO) Global Data Base on Child
Growth: Children are judged to be short or
"stunted" if their height falls below the
2.3 percentile level of standard height-to-age
tables.
Table 6 shows the percentage of
children under age five in developing nations who
are judged to be "stunted" by this
standard.
In
developing nations as a whole, some 43 percent of
children are stunted. In Africa, more than a third
of young children are affected; in Asia, near-ly
half.
By contrast, in the United
States, some 2.6 percent of young children in poor
households are stunted by a comparable standard--a
rate only slightly above the expected standard for
healthy, well-nourished children.
While concern for the
well-being of poor American children is always
prudent, the data overall underscore how large and
well-nourished poor American children are by global
standards.
Throughout
this century, improvements in nutrition and health
have led to increases in the rate of growth and
ultimate height and weight of American children.
Poor children have clearly benefited from this
trend. Poor boys today at ages 18 and 19 are
actually taller and heavier than boys of similar age
in the general U.S. population in the late 1950s.
Poor boys living today are one inch taller and some
10 pounds heavier than GIs of similar age during
World War II, and nearly two inches taller and 20
pounds heavier than American doughboys back in World
War I.
Poverty
and Obesity
The
principal nutrition-related health problem among the
poor, as with the general U.S. population, stems
from the overconsumption, not underconsumption, of
food. While overweight and obesity are prevalent
problems throughout the U.S. population, they are
found most frequently among poor adults. Poor adult
men are slightly less likely than non-poor men to be
overweight (30.4 percent compared to 31.9 percent);
but, as Chart 4 shows, poor adult women are
significantly more likely to be overweight than are
non-poor women (47.3 percent compared to 32
percent).
Living
Conditions and Hardships Among the Poor
Overall,
the living standards of most poor Americans are far
higher than is generally appreciated. The
overwhelming majority of poor families are
well-housed, have adequate food, and enjoy a wide
range of modern amenities, including air
conditioning and cable television. Some 70 percent
of poor households report that during the course of
the past year they were able to meet "all
essential expenses," including mortgage, rent,
utility bills, and important medical care.
(See Chart 5.)
However,
two caveats should be applied to this generally
optimistic picture. First, many poor families have
difficulty paying their regular bills and must
scramble to make ends meet. For example, around
one-quarter of poor families are late in paying the
rent or utility bills at some point during the year.
Second,
the living conditions of the average poor household
should not be taken to represent all poor
households. There is a wide range of living
conditions among the poor; while more than a quarter
of the poor have cell phones and answering machines,
a tenth of the poor have no telephone at all. While
most of America's poor live in accommodations with
two or more rooms per person, roughly a tenth of the
poor are crowded, with less than one room per
person.
These
points are illustrated in Table 7, which lists the
financial and material hardships among poor
households in 1998.
During at least one month in
the preceding year, some 20 percent of poor
households reported they were unable to pay their
fuel, gas, or electric bills promptly; around 4
percent had their utilities cut off at some point
due to nonpayment. Another 13 percent of poor
households failed, at some point in the year, to
make their full monthly rent or mortgage payments,
and 1 percent were evicted due to failure to pay
rent. One in 10 poor families had their phones
disconnected due to nonpayment at some time during
the preceding year.
Overall,
more than one-quarter of poor families experienced
at least one financial difficulty during the year.
Most had a late payment of rent or utility bills.
Some 12 percent had phones or utilities cut off or
were evicted.
Poor
households also experienced the material problems
listed on Table 7.
Some 14 percent lacked medical
insurance and had a family member who needed to go
to a doctor or hospital but did not go; 11 percent
experienced hunger in the household; and around 9
percent were overcrowded, with more than one person
per room. Slightly less than 4 percent of poor
households experienced upkeep problems with the
physical conditions of their apartments or homes,
having three or more of the physical problems listed
in Table 7.
Overall
Hardship
Altogether,
around 58 percent of poor households experienced
none of the financial or physical hardships listed
in Table 7 These families were able to pay all
their bills on time. They were able to obtain
medical care if needed, were not hungry or
crowded, and had few upkeep problems in the home.
Another 20 percent of poor households experienced
one financial or material problem during the year.
Around 10 percent of poor households had two
financial or material problems, while 12 percent
had three or more.
The
most common problem facing poor households was
late payment of rent or utilities. While having
difficulty paying monthly bills is stressful, in
most cases late payment did not result in material
hardship or deprivation. If late payment problems
are excluded from the count, we find that
two-thirds of poor households had none of the
remaining problems listed in Table 7. Some 22
percent had one problem, and 12 percent had two or
more problems.
While
it is appropriate to be concerned about the
difficulties faced by some poor families, it is
important to keep these problems in perspective.
Many poor families have intermittent difficulty
paying rent or utility bills but remain very
well-housed by historic or international
standards. Even poor families who are overcrowded
and hungry, by U.S. standards, are still likely to
have living conditions that are far above the
world average.
Reducing
Child Poverty
The
generally high living standards of poor Americans
are good news. Even better is the fact that our
nation can readily reduce remaining poverty,
especially among children. To accomplish this, we
must focus on the main causes of child poverty: low
levels of parental work and high levels of single
parenthood.
In
good economic times or bad, the typical poor family
with children is supported by only 800 hours of work
during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per
week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000
hours per year--the equivalent of one adult working
40 hours per week through the year--nearly 75
percent of poor children would be lifted out of
official poverty.
The
decline in marriage is the second major cause of
child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children
reside in single-parent homes; each year, an
additional 1.3 million children are born out of
wedlock. Increasing marriage would substantially
reduce child poverty: If poor mothers married the
fathers of their children, almost three-quarters
would immediately be lifted out of poverty.
In
recent years, the United States has established a
reasonable record in reducing child poverty.
Successful anti-poverty policies were partially
implemented in the welfare reform legislation of
1996, which replaced the old Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC) program with a new program
called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).
A
key element of this reform was a requirement that
some welfare mothers either prepare for work or get
jobs as a condition of receiving aid. As this
requirement went into effect, welfare rolls
plummeted and employment of single mothers increased
in an unprecedented manner. As employment of single
mothers rose, child poverty dropped rapidly. For
example, in the quarter-century before welfare
reform, there was no net change in the poverty rate
of children in single-mother families; after reform
was enacted, the poverty rate dropped in an
unprecedented fashion, falling from 53.1 percent in
1995 to 39.8 percent in 2001.
In
general, however, welfare reform has been limited in
both scope and intensity. Even in the TANF program,
over half the adult beneficiaries are idle on the
rolls and are not engaged in activities leading to
self-sufficiency. Work requirements are virtually
nonexistent in related programs such as food stamps
and public housing. Even worse, despite the fact
that marriage has enormous financial and
psychological benefits for parents and children,
welfare reform has done little or nothing to
strengthen marriage in low-income communities.
Overall, the welfare system continues to encourage
idle dependence rather than work and to reward
single parenthood while penalizing marriage.
If
child poverty is to be substantially reduced,
welfare must be transformed. Able-bodied parents
must be required to work or prepare for work, and
the welfare system should encourage rather than
penalize marriage.
Conclusion
The
living conditions of persons defined as poor by the
government bear little resemblance to notions of
"poverty" held by the general public. If
poverty is defined as lacking adequate nutritious
food for one's family, a reasonably warm and dry
apartment to live in, or a car with which to get to
work when one is needed, then there are relatively
few poor persons remaining in the United States.
Real material hardship does occur, but it is limited
in scope and severity.
The
typical American defined as "poor" by the
government has a car, air conditioning, a
refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer,
and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable
or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and
a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His
home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By
his own report, his family is not hungry and he had
sufficient funds in the past year to meet his
family's essential needs. While this individual's
life is not opulent, it is equally far from the
popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the
press, liberal activists, and politicians.
But
the living conditions of the average poor person
should not be taken to mean that all poor Americans
live without hardship. There is a wide range of
living conditions among the poor. Roughly a third of
poor households do face material hardships such as
overcrowding, intermittent food shortages, or
difficulty obtaining medical care. However, even
these households would be judged to have high living
standards in comparison to most other people in the
world.
Perhaps
the best news is that the United States can readily
reduce its remaining poverty, especially among
children. The main causes of child poverty in the
United States are low levels of parental work and
high numbers of single-parent families. By
increasing work and marriage, our nation can
virtually eliminate remaining child poverty.
Robert
E. Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic
Policy Studies and Kirk
A. Johnson, Ph.D., is Harry and Jeanette
Weinberg Fellow in Statistical Welfare Research in
the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage
Foundation.
scribe's note:
the thirty-five foot notes, and graphic charts can be viewed at this link.
