Captain's Quarters -

No, Mr. Edwards is correct. There are at least two Americas. There is one America comprised of people who fly in private jets, own multiple homes, never interact with any "persons of color" aside from the hired help (both inside and on the grounds) and perhaps when rubbing elbows at a Hollywood fundraiser with the likes of Halle Berry; and whose primary home is somewhere in excess of 10,000 square feet in size; and who (in the words of Gary Trudeau in a Doonesbery comic this past week)"have no idea why anyone would serve" [in the military], since they don't actually know any of the poor saps belonging to this separate (again Trudeau's words) "professional class" personally.

In short, the separate America to which Mr. Edwards and his wife belong, but which is alien to the other 99.99% of us, who have never set foot in a private jet and never will, who make due with one house (roughly the size of Mr. Edward's game/rec room); who must on a regular basis do things like try to get the 711 clerk to understand what it is desired behind the counter due his not speaking any English; and who personally know an enlisted person or two, and can understand exactly why they choose to serve.

So give the man his due. His America is indeed like an entirely separate and mysterious universe to working stiffs like myself and tens of millions of others.

Perhaps somebody can enlighten me: isn't the "poverty line" simply some percentage of the average income? If so, then isn't it reasonable to assume that we will have an ever-growing NUMBER (but more or less stable fraction) of "poor people" in America?

Further, if Americans are growing richer each year, doesn't that mean that the "poor" are, too?

It's very hard for me to accept all the gloom 'n' doom wailing about how bad our economy is when I see everywhere people driving new cars (often rather expensive cars, at that), new houses and up-scale condos, coffee shops, massage therapy salons, and other "luxury" locations. People who are struggling to get along from day to day in The Worst Economy Since the Great Depression(TM) don't spend $5 on a latte at Starbucks or drop $70 on a pedicure. For such businesses - and so many of them - to exist and flourish, there must be quite a few people around with lots of disposable income. Not "poor" at all.

Are there "poor" people who live in desperate circumstances? Of course... but not nearly so many as the socialist chicken littles would have us believe.

Damn! I'm poor. And here I always thought I was doing OK.

Thanks for pointing that out to me.

"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."

That's a staggering statistic.

The poorest 20% of Americans spend on average what the average American spent 35 years ago. Seems to me that the average "poor" American is indeed able to get credit, equity, and a major slice of the pie that increased productivity created for the entire country.

There are two Americas...those who earn, and those who live off of those who earn.

I hav enever liked the "definition" of poverty. Given the rules for defining poverty if I can make poverty endemic in America: the poverty line is now $1,000,000 per year. Suddenly almost everyone in America lives in poverty.

As the study rightly points out the definition is simply too simplistic. How can we have a rational debate about poverty if the definition is so arbitrary? Like many things in America if the politicians haven't screwed it up the lawyers have.

These comparisons over time are misleading for another reason: the top quintile today is composed of different people than it was ten years ago, and the same goes for the bottom quintile. No-one is guaranteed a place at the top or locked into the bottom.

Actually, Roger, there are some people who are guaranteed a place at the top.

Wiki "Paris_Hilton".

This has long been a pet peeve of mine. I would like to see somebody do a study where they define poverty by some objective criteria such as: Income sufficient to provide X calories per day for their family, a roof over their heads with access to clean water on the local economy. See how the US stacks up against the world when you use a definition which reflects REAL poverty. I say this not to denigrate the problems of those in the lower quintile of the US economy, for they are real enough. But they are not of the same order as those of the truly impoverished who are literally starving in other parts of the world.

I work for the welfare department in a large California county. I can tell you a bit about poverty.

Almost all our clients are single women with kids. Sometimes they know where the father is, and sometimes not (or who). Most clients cooperate with us to help us collect child support, however there a LARGE numbers of fathers that will not work because they don't want to pay. They make money off the records, deal drugs, or work for a month and then quit before tha garnishment sets in.

Here are some stats: for married couples, of ANY race, poverty is around 8%. That includes youg couples just starting out, immigrants, etc.

For single white women with kids, poverty is about 25%.

For single black women with kids, poverty is about 35%.

There is a formula for saying out of poverty:

1. Graduate from high school
2. Get, and keep, any full time job
3. Don't get married until your 20s, and
4. Don't have kids until you married and can afford them.

It's not rocket science. But 40 years of "anything is OK" and liberals making sure people don't have to be responsible for themselves.

The black illegitimacy rate is 80%. For whites, it's over 25%.

Kids born to single mothers are seven times more likely than kids born to married couples to end in in jail or on welfare.

The only rational definition of poverty is statistical, some (statistical) distance below the mean, median, or average income.

This is why "you will always have the poor with you".

We need a different word for the absolute condition of "no shelter, not enough food, etc"

ain't that the truth.
amen to this (politically incorrect) advice, scott. too bad saying it aloud (see bill cosby) results in wide-spread castigation by those who are uncomfortable with these inconvenient facts.
shhhh, keep quiet. don't want folks to feel bad about themselves.

"1. Graduate from high school
2. Get, and keep, any full time job
3. Don't get married until your 20s, and
4. Don't have kids until you married and can afford them."

Those are the main ones. To them, I'll add a few supplemental ones:

5. Stay off of illegal drugs. ALL illegal drugs including 'weed.' That sure can't hurt in achieving 1, 2 and 4 above, now can it.
6. Only drink in moderation. See #5 above. Staying out of trouble with the law is generally a good thing.
7. Don't smoke. Sure sure, "no harm now" they always say when they're 19; and "I'll quit in a couple of years..." But hey, forgetting about the health issues, at the very minimum you are literally burning up dollar bills which could otherwise be saved up to pay for car repairs, which can help you with....1 and 2 above...

But yeah, keeping your butt in school and keeping your legs together until you're at least 21, is pretty much guaranteed to keep you (and your children) out of John Edwards' other America. Sure would be nice if some of the race hustlers and vote exploiters would think to mention that, just once.

There seems to be some confusion about what the poverty line is. In effect, it is a set of estimates from 1964 of the income necessary for households of varying sizes to avoid poverty. Those numbers have been increased every year by the Consumer Price Index. There were minor changes made in the early 80s.

The income used is pre-tax monetary income, not including capital gains, which obviously makes lots of retired households look poorer than they actually are. Benefits in kind (Medicare, Food Stamps, etc.) are also not counted. The definitions I've seen (e.g., from the Census Bureau here) do not say explicitly whether EITC is included, but from the definition ("pre-tax") I assume the answer is no.

The announced poverty rate measures, in effect, how many households don't have sufficient wage income to escape poverty, assuming that CPI is accurate and nothing fundamental has changed since 1964.

Regarding poverty - In the U.S. poverty is measured only by the amount of income you have, or receive,(or report at end of year) not the possessions you have. You can own or live in a $300,000 home, have 2 cars, several tv's, etc, but because your recorded income is under a certain amount you are poor. You can spend a lot more money than what you report as receiving, but that does not disqualify you from being "poor".

Several studies have shown that the "poor" spend up to 50% more than they report as income.

There are genuine pockets of poverty in the US, but they are not necessarily found in large cities.

I've never been poor but I have experienced cash flow problems before.

I don't know how many poor people there really are but I think there are a fair number of people living paycheck to paycheck with little or no savings, substantial credit card debt, big mortgages and car payments, etc. They live well right now because they have decent salaries coming in every month but they're borrowing and charging all the time. They have no real life line if disaster hits, a lay off, downsizing, catastrophic illness and so on.

So if I were going to add a rule to some of the one listed above, I would add: Pay as you go as much as you can.

And don't ever listen to anyone who tells you that buying a big new house with a huge mortgage is a good idea because it's such a great investment. No it isn't. It's a place to live. If you make money when you sell it? That's a bonus.

Okay, probably this is all O/T...but then I have nothing original to say about poverty. Except I think it's a bad thing.

I believe that every American should visit a much poorer country, such as India. After that, they will shut up about poverty and pollution in America.
I made several trips to India several years ago. I saw people living in corrugated metal shacks, with no electricity or running water (and next to an open sewer). I saw other people living under tarpaulins rigged as tents. This was in Bangalore, which has been called the "Silicon Valley of India". A friend of mine who stayed one night in Mumbai said that compared to Mumbai, Bangalore was like Hollywood.

The main reason we have a hard time defining poverty is the fact that there are too few poor people in America to make a reasonable comparison. Compared to the number of "poor" in the early days of this country, or the people who are poor in other countries, those who literally had no idea if they will have food to eat that day, we are positively wealthy! After all, one of the biggest signs of poverty is the threat of starvation and how may people actually starve to death in America due to poverty? I haven't heard of any, have you?

BTW, There's no guarantee that any of us will never be poor by today's standards, that even includes Paris Hilton. Suppose she makes a bad investment and looses all her money? Things like that have happened before and I have no doubt they will happen again. Life's kinda funny that way, one day you can be king of the world, and a week later you're reduced to sweeping up trash for $6.00 an hour.

Two quick things. First, do you have a citation for your statistics about home ownership, etc. of the poor? Your numbers correlate will with some older numbers I've found, but I can't find any study since the late 90s.

Second, if you want an interesting perspective on this from a Christian perspective, take a look at The Good of Affluence: Seeking God in a Culture of Wealth by John Schneider. The big "problem" that folk are having is transitioning from the rather premodern idea that wealth accrues only at the expense of others. Modern capitalist systems have achieved the unachievable -- creating wealth at such a rate that everybody can be wealthy in any but the more abstract and relative sense. From a Christian point of view, then, is it better to choose the older traditional view of charity as transfer of income, or charity as empowerment to create wealth. Unfortunately, in many cases, particularly in the third world and with the multigenerational poor in the US, the two are mutually exclusive. Traditional charity -- the transfer of income from more wealthy to less wealthy -- enables political and cultural systems that cause poverty by temporarily allieviating the symptoms without addressing the causes. Empowerment directed charity -- encouraging the change of these systems -- conversely can seem very uncharitable because the only way to cause change is to stop the enabling and instead direct resources towards causing the change. Thus, in Zimbabwe, for instance, is it better to prop up the Mugabe government by providing aid, much of which is diverted to the government itself, or to instead try to cause a change in the government. Once will alleviate pain in the short term, but encourage long misery; the other will cause more short term misery, but is the only way to change things in the long term for the better.

It's a fascinating post to read--because it's the experience of my life.

I'm a college student who grew up on a family-owned and run farm. By the technical definitions, my family has almost always been "in poverty." While I was in elementary school, I know we qualified for discounted/free meals at school. My father refused them and insisted on paying full price for both myself and my brother.

To this day, their income is below the poverty line. They own three quarters of land (plus some spare acres), have some sixty thousand dollars invested in the stock market, have several cars and pickups, working equipment for farming, and several motorcycles. They've put two children through college. Most of all, they've managed to do so without accumulating debt and are, to this day, debt-free.

Now, granted, the Midwest has a lower cost-of-living than a coastal city and that does make a difference; but I always view my family and wonder at how ludicrous the "poverty line" really can be, because we're certainly not hurting badly.

How did they do this? Using their heads. Not living beyond their means. Saving money, rather than buying something they couldn't afford. Scrimping. Saving. Doing things themselves, rather than hire someone else to do it. Taking responsibility for their lives.

Poverty is not hunger. And so long as our country does not devote a larger share of its GDP towards international aid, then our standard of poverty should not be compared to poverty in other countries. Rich people cannot be allowed to say poor Americans have "the good life" (relatively speaking). It is a cop out. And as far as I've seen, the higher standard of living for America's poor is still unhealthy, unsafe, unsatisfying, and presents very little opportunity for people to dig themselves out of poverty. Poor people in America eat at fast food restaurants, have limited access to health care and have lower standards of health care provided them, and they pay higher interest rates on credit cards or obtain no credit at all. They live in unsafe neighborhoods surrounded by multi-national businesses that give (next to) nothing back to the communities (in terms of taxes to the government on the local level).

As far as the formulas provided for staying out of poverty, I implore everyone to ask themselves the following questions: "What inherent barriers exist in our society to impede persons (and their children) living in poverty from doing those easy-to-follow steps?" There are many.

Poverty is not hunger. And so long as our country does not devote a larger share of its GDP towards international aid, then our standard of poverty should not be compared to poverty in other countries. Rich people cannot be allowed to say poor Americans have "the good life" (relatively speaking). It is a cop out.

And as far as I've seen, the higher standard of living for America's poor is still unhealthy, unsafe, unsatisfying, and presents very little opportunity for people to dig themselves out of poverty. Poor people in America eat at fast food restaurants, have limited access to health care and have lower standards of health care provided them, and they pay higher interest rates on credit cards or obtain no credit at all. They live in unsafe neighborhoods surrounded by multi-national businesses that give (next to) nothing back to the communities (in terms of taxes to the government on the local level).

As far as the formulas provided for staying out of poverty, I implore everyone to ask themselves the following questions: "What inherent barriers exist in our society to impede persons (and their children) living in poverty from doing those easy-to-follow steps?" There are many.

I recall awhile back, possibly before 9/11 even, reading an Indian-American blogger with the handle, "The Kolkota Libertarian" (SP on the proper spelling of Calcutta). He related a story about an aquaintance of his from back in Calcutta visiting the States. He asked his friend why he was taking his holiday in the US, and the friend replied that "He wanted to see the place where the poor people are fat."

no name,

Since you are so convinced that these barriers exist. Name them.

What barrier prevents people from finishing high school?
What barrier prevents people from not getting pregnant before they get married?
What barrier prevents people from getting married?

etc.

And the US gives a higher percentage of its GDP to foreign charity than any other country on earth. It's just that most of comes from individuals instead of the govt, so in the eyes of people like you, it doesn't count.

no name: The issue isn't whether there is real poverty in America. There is. I'm even somewhat sympathetic to the argument that being poor among riches is, in some ways, harder than being poor among poverty. But that's not the issue here. The issue is whether we define and measure poverty correctly. If we don't measure the problem correctly, we have no hope of solving it.

From that point of view, there seems to be two obvious problems with our current definition of poverty. First, we measure income badly. To see what remains to be done, we need to take account of what's already been done. In other words, it doesn't make much sense not to count EITC and in-kind benefits. It makes no sense not to include capital gains, which is real cash income available to be used. Among other things, the failure to count capital gains as income increases the appearance that the poor are going into debt when their expenditures exceed their "income" but not their income plus capital gains.

A harder question is what to do with assets? To what extent should we expect people to liquidate their assets to support themselves before we use tax money to support them? This is a genuinely hard question and I'm ambivalent about the answer; but without some hard data it's impossible to know whether this is a real issue. It seems likely that, with respect to the retired, it might be. I'm at least open to including assets in income by, for example, taking the market value of the assets, dividing by the life-expectancy of the youngest person in the household and then multiplying by, say, .5. This is a very conservative method of taking high asset/low income households out of the poverty (or near poverty) statistics -- so conservative that it might not make much difference.

The second problem with our current poverty measures is the threshold itself. It is based on three times the price of a 1955 "economical" diet annually inflated by CPI. CPI is generally thought to be 1% overstated annually, implying that the threshold might be as much as 50% too high relative to 1955. Diet and the type, relative cost and availability of food has changed so dramatically since 1955 that the original measure is most likely irrelevant to modern living. Basically, we have a bad definition that we measure badly.

The real problem of poverty in the US is two-fold. No one should be chronically hungry or denied critical healthcare because they're poor. No discrete group should be condemned by social conditions to multi-generational poverty. The first problem is cheap and easy and has pretty much been solved -- I think. We need better statistics in order to be sure. The second problem, which you identify, may stem from racism, as you imply, or poor education or systematic denial of good nutrition or the culture of poverty. This is probably neither cheap nor easy to fix. Again, we won't even begin to know until we've got good statistics to work with.

"And as far as I've seen, the higher standard of living for America's poor is still unhealthy;"

Unhealthy compared to what? Compared to whom? Yes, doing things like snorting coke, smoking weed, and having multiple sex partners starting at age 15, so that you are already Mommies and Daddies at an age when you should be thinking about 10th grade geometry is unhealthy. But last time I checked those are choices made by free will.

"Unsafe;" Yes, tougher crime laws and going after the bad guys and locking them up; throwing bad kids out of h.s. so that the other 90% of the kids who just want to have a normal school life are not subjected to the disruption, distractions, danger, etc., is indeed something conservatives support; no child should have to walk out his/her apartment and be faced with drug lords and gangbangers - on the sidewalks or at school. Too bad another huge segment of our society disagrees, and would rather mollycoddle thugs instead of locking them up.

"Unsatisfying:" Yeah, my life is pretty damn unsatisfying too at times. Can I get a welfare check please? Snort.

"And presents very little opportunity for people to dig themselves out of poverty." See hints for getting and staying out of poverty posted earlier.

"Poor people in America eat at fast food restaurants:" Free choice. Unwise choice, perhaps, but choice made by free will. Buying and cooking a can of beans, some rice, and a chicken is healthier AND costs less money; but some people would just rather have a Big Mac and fries. This is not McDonalds fault; and it is not my fault. But if you want to blame yourself for these choices, be my guest.

"have limited access to health care and have lower standards of health care provided them" Ah, yes, the primary and key theme for the Libs in the 08 election. Canadian/British/Euro socialized medicine. "Universal Health Care" is going to be beaten to death like a drum. Yeah, whatever. Different debate for another day. One question: If an uninsured kid from the poorest neighborhood in NYC or Chicago is rushed to the ER of a hosptial with an agonizing pain in his side which turns out to be acute appendicitis - is the care and treatment he gets going to be the same if not superior to the care/treatment of 90%+ of all other children in the world? You damn well know the answer to that question is yes.

"and they pay higher interest rates on credit cards;" Instead of blaming Bank of America, here's an idea: Don't take out a credit card, until you've followed the steps mentioned above, which includes taking full advantage of a free public education offered to all Americans, so that you can make wise monetary decisions instead of becoming an ignorant illiterate. That is the solution. Problem solved.

"They live in unsafe neighborhoods surrounded by multi-national businesses that give (next to) nothing back to the communities (in terms of taxes to the government on the local level)." The existence of Walmart in America is not the cause of anyone's poverty. Sorry to break that to you. Failure to follow the steps mentioned earlier are the cause of most of the 'poverty' in this country.

Stay in school, study, put a little effort into it;graduate.
Depending on your gender, either keep it in your pants or keep your legs together until you are around 21 or so. Tough, but far from impossible. Prior to the advent of birth control, MOST of the people in prior generations somehow managed to exercise a little will power.
Don't do drugs or booze. Stay sober.
Here's one more hint: If you don't know English, become OBSESSED with learning it, and forcing your kids to be proficient in it. Instead of e.g., celebrating "La Raza," decide to make your home an English speaking home, and try to force yourself and your kids to speak it at the dinner table. I thought of that one, because I am told that that is what my immigrant German great-granparents did with my grandmother when she was a child in the early 1900's.

Any person of any race is free in this country to make all sorts of choices which can lead him or her out of 'poverty' and/or break the cycle of poverty for their CHILDREN.

"The definitions I've seen (e.g., from the Census Bureau here) do not say explicitly whether EITC is included, but from the definition ("pre-tax") I assume the answer is no."

EITC is not included. What is the major anti-poverty program? EITC.

What is being measured is th number who need help: not what the number "living in poverty" after they've got help is.

One very amusing point to make here. John Edwards insists that the way to alleviate poverty is to raise the EITC and have more housing vouchers. Good ideas both. But, unfortunately, given the way hte poverty numbers are calculated, they will not change the official numbers in poverty one iota.

Ed - you cited "2% of 20%" as the "actual" amount of poverty - people who regularly go w/o necessary food, etc. If I'm not mistaken, you should have used 2% of those in poverty, or 12.4% +/-, which results in a "true" poverty rate of 0.3%.

I can't be sure without checking the numbers, but it looks like you substituted "lowest quintile" for "at or below poverty line".