One of the biggest myths about the United States is that it's a
mostly "middle class" society, with poverty confined to a minority of
the population.
The reality is exactly the opposite: The vast majority of people in
the United States will experience poverty and economic insecurity for a
significant portion of their lives.
A recent Associated Press feature article--relying
on data from an exhaustive survey to be published next year by Oxford
University Press--has put this in stark terms: Around four out of every
five people in the U.S. will endure unemployment, receive food stamps
and other forms of government aid, and/or have an income below 150
percent of the official poverty line for at least one year of their
lives before age 60.
That startling statistic shows the truth about a society where there
are a lot more have-nots or have-littles than have-enoughs. But there
are so many other myths and misconceptions about poverty in America. For
example, the AP and Oxford statistics show that while people of color
suffer economic difficulties at disproportionately high rates, large
numbers of whites fall into the same category. Similarly, more whites
benefit from social programs such as welfare and food stamps than any
other group.
These facts contradict the racist stereotypes about who is poor or at
risk of falling into poverty. And they underline the reality that the
vast majority of Americans of all races are in the same boat--they
scramble to get by, at best--while only a small minority of people live
comfortably throughout their lives, and a tiny few are obscenely rich.
The official government statistics measuring poverty often obscure more than they reveal.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2011, there were 46.2 million
people living below the federal poverty level--15 percent of the 308
million people living in the United States.
If this statistic were an accurate reflection of the number of people
living in poverty, it would still represent a crisis. However, actual
levels of economic and social deprivation and insecurity are much higher
than the official figures show--because they are based on outdated
measures that greatly underestimate the true level of impoverishment in
the richest country in the world.
For example, in 2013, an individual living in the continental U.S.
must make less than $11,490 a year to be counted as officially poor. For a family of four, the poverty level is $23,550.
Those are paltry sums, as anyone reading this article knows. Even the
figure used in the AP and Oxford research of 150 percent of the federal
government's poverty level--$17,235 for an individual and $35,325 for a
family of four--is painfully low. In many parts of the country, making
ends meet on
twice the federal poverty threshold is difficult if not impossible.
That's what the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found when its researchers developed their
"Family Budget Calculator,"
which, unlike the federal measures, takes into account specific
regional differences in the prices of necessities. The EPI looks at the
costs of a variety of goods and services--housing, food, health care,
child care, transportation and other basic needs – to determine what a
family in a given area would need to earn "in order to attain a secure
yet modest living standard."
Regional variations can be extreme. For example,
average rent in New York City is now over $3,000,
compared to just under $600 in Oklahoma City. But according to EPI, its
calculator shows that families everywhere "need more than twice the
amount of the federal poverty line to get by."
Nationally, four in 10 people live at or below 200 percent of the
federal poverty level. Thus, the number of people in the U.S. who would
be classified as poor based on this more accurate standard is more than
two-and-a-half times greater than the official figure.
The survey data reported by AP reveal even more widespread
experiences with poverty--79 percent of everyone in the U.S. will spend
at least one year of their lives facing "periodic joblessness, reliance
on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the
poverty line."
The researchers who calculated that statistics believe things will
only get worse if current trends continue--by 2030, they expect that
percentage to reach 85 percent.
So economic insecurity isn't the exception, but the rule.
Another recent survey found that:
Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings
account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion
the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected
event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults. Meanwhile, 50 percent of
those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27 percent had
no savings at all.
The consequences of all this plays out in numerous ways in people's day-to-day lives.
For example, bouts of unemployment can have serious, lasting impacts on those affected, even for those who find another job.
Unemployment is associated with mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, as well as chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
For children, "poverty experienced at any stage of the child's development is associated with reduced cognitive outcomes,"
according to researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Increasingly, a period of unemployment can trigger a longer term, if not permanent, drop in living standards.
According to the National Employment Law Project,
during the Great Recession, 60 percent of lost jobs were at the middle
level of wages, paying between $13.84 and $21.13 an hour, but only 22
percent of new jobs in the recover fell into this category. By contrast,
low-wage jobs accounted for 58 percent of all new jobs created in the
recovery.
Many of these new jobs are in retail and fast food, where workers are
often forced to work multiple jobs and still fail to make ends meet. As
Terrance Wise, a worker at Pizza Hut and Burger King in Kansas City,
who went on strike this month to demand $15 per hour, told
Democracy Now!:
I have three lovely daughters and an equally lovable fiancée. And I'm
working two jobs at about 50, 60 hours a week, so I'm leaving in the
morning...and my daughters were still sleeping. When I get off tonight,
they will probably be asleep again. So it's consecutive days where I
don't get to see my daughters... That's one element that's really the
hardest...
It's just an everyday hustle. I use public transportation every day,
so I have to leave early to get to work. So I'm gone 15, 17 hours a day.
It's just really hard--a struggle every day.
The flip side of that struggle--and of the fact that vast majority of
people in the country live in poverty now, have lived in poverty in the
past, or will in the future--is that a relatively small minority has
amassed such fantastic wealth that they will never have to worry about
going without, even if they never earn another cent.
The 400 richest Americans, with a total net worth of $1.7 trillion as
of last year, were worth an average of $4.2 billion each, enough to
support over 89,000 families of four at 200 percent of the poverty level
for an entire year.
It is no coincidence that overall corporate profits, measured as a share of the gross domestic product,
are at record highs while overall wages are at record lows
as a percentage of the GDP. The threat of economic insecurity is an
important part of discouraging workers' struggles and increasing profits
at the expense of the living standards of the vast majority. The
personal experience of going without--and the constant reminder from
seeing family, friends and others in the community deal with stretches
of poverty and unemployment--sends the message that workers who step out
of line can face the same fate.
The research covered in the AP feature shows growth in the rates of
white poverty, something often overlooked in mainstream media accounts.
According to AP:
By race, nonwhites still have a higher risk of being economically
insecure, at 90 percent. But compared with the official poverty rate,
some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure are among whites, with
more than 76 percent enduring periods of joblessness, life on welfare
or near-poverty.
According
to the Census Bureau, there were more than 19 million non-Latino whites
living below the poverty line in 2011, compared to 11 million African
Americans and 13 million Latinos.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports
that 36.9 percent of food stamp recipients are non-Latino whites, while
22.8 percent are Black and 9.6 percent are Latino(the race of
recipients was unknown in 18.4 percent of cases, according to the USDA).
Blacks, whites and Latinos each accounted for roughly the same percentage--between 30 and 32 percent--of recipients of the main welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Despite these facts, poverty in the U.S. is often racialized by
political leaders--more often and more brazenly by Republicans, but by
Democrats, too. The common stereotype about these government programs is
that they benefit an "undeserving" (read: Black) minority, not workers
of all races.
Ronald Reagan, for example, explicitly made race a part of his
caricature of Cadillac-driving (Black) "welfare queens" and "young
bucks" who were taking advantage of hard-working (white) "taxpayers."
During the 2012 Republican primaries, Newt Gingrich recycled the same
racist filth when he called Obama the "food stamp president."
But Democrats have latched on to the same stereotypes when they were
the ones wielding the budget act. It was a Democrat, Bill Clinton, who
promised to "end welfare as we have come to know it"--and carried
through his campaign pledge when he signed the "Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Act." Likewise, Hillary Clinton, in her losing bid
for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, was playing the same
racist game when
she claimed she was better positioned than Barack Obama to win the support of "hard-working Americans, white Americans."
The facts, however, undermine these commonly used stereotypes. As the
AP pointed out, "For the first time since 1975, the number of white
single-mother households living in poverty with children surpassed or
equaled Black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and faster
rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites."
The fact that widespread poverty and insecurity crosses racial lines
on the one hand, but that racist stereotypes are used to justify attacks
on social programs that benefit the majority on the other, means that
struggles for economic and racial justice must be intertwined in order
for either one to be successful. Those who seek to defend and extend
unemployment insurance, welfare, food stamps and other benefits that
help working people must challenge the racism used to undermine
them--while those who seek racial justice must also struggle for
economic justice.
On this 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, it is
important to remember that the civil rights demonstrators were demanding
jobs and freedom. The calls for racial and economic justice were
linked, as they were again in the Poor Peoples' Campaign that Martin
Luther King Jr. would help launch a few years later.
Speaking of the campaign,
King called it "a new co-operation, understanding, and a determination
by poor people of all colors and backgrounds to assert and win their
right to a decent life and respect for their culture and dignity."
That struggle for the right to a decent life is still with us today.
Although
they might look like it, none of the words or expression listed below
is in any way dirty, and to prove it we're giving you the correct
definitions. But use them at your own risk.
