Poverty Increasing in America

Statistics show that poverty is increasing in America. Given predatory credit cards, pay day cash sharks (including some just outside military bases), variable loans that can result in losing a home, a volatile job market where good pay is often followed by much lower pay, it's getting easier for Americans to get in trouble these days and trouble doesn't necessarily mean poverty but it can mean serious problems, difficulty and worry. We're keep hearing about record corporate profits but most Americans have to wonder where those profits are going.

Statistics are funny; we know they don't always tell the full picture. In California, rents are high and take a significant portion of income. But there are homeowners who can barely make ends meet who share their homes with others. I met a woman in her 60s a few years ago crippled with arthritis and heart trouble who had three adult sons, one with a wife, living at home along with a grandson by her daughter (who lived elsewhere and had lost custody of the boy); the small house had only two bedrooms, though the married son and his wife lived more or less in the small converted garage and the grandson slept in the living room. It was not an easy living arrangement for anyone. There are many stories out there and they don't always get told.

Tony Pugh of the McClatchy Washington Bureau has a long article on the increased number of Americans in severe poverty:

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 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.

(snip)

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 explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

(snip)

As more poor Americans sink into severe poverty, more individuals and families living within $8,000 above or below the poverty line also have seen their incomes decline. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University attributes this to what he calls a "sinkhole effect" on income.

"Just as a sinkhole causes everything above it to collapse downward, families and individuals in the middle and upper classes appear to be migrating to lower-income tiers that bring them closer to the poverty threshold," Woolf wrote in the study.

(snip)

One in three Americans will experience a full year of extreme poverty at some point in his or her adult life, according to long-term research by Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at the Washington University in St. Louis.

An estimated 58 percent of Americans between the ages of 20 and 75 will spend at least a year in poverty, Rank said. Two of three will use a public assistance program between ages 20 and 65, and 40 percent will do so for five years or more.

These estimates apply only to non-immigrants. If illegal immigrants were factored in, the numbers would be worse, Rank said.

"It would appear that for most Americans the question is no longer if, but rather when, they will experience poverty. ...

The article includes stories about two people in poverty. Multiply that by millions and none of us can take it in. It's a disturbing article. For my money, it shows the failure of Republicanism over the last 26 years and the failure of American business for over thirty years to honor its long-standing agreement with American workers. If something isn't done, it's going to get worse.