Poverty in the US

DIY

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Sep 18, 2011
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The question is this: where's the poverty in America? I'd really like to help fix it, but I'm having a hard time finding it.

I used to think I found it in Appalachia - but my standards have since been lowered, and I no longer agree with the census bureau on what constitutes poverty.

I also checked in the big city... I see a lot of crime, and a lot of bad stuff, but the poverty situation seems more or less under control. Yes there are people in poverty, but there seems to be plenty of help available to them already.

Anyone know where there's serious poverty in this country?
 
Granny says people can't help bein' poor - dey just ain't got no money...
:(
Poverty affects 46 million Americans
28 Sept.`11 – Billy Schlegel plunged from middle class into poverty in the time it took his daughter to play a soccer season.
In January 2010, he was making $50,000 a year as a surveyor, meeting the mortgage payments on his three-bedroom home in the nation's wealthiest county and paying for his children to play hockey and soccer. Then came February. Schlegel, 45, was laid off. During the next 18 months, the divorced father of three almost lost his house, had to stop paying child support and turned to the local food bank for basic necessities. "You've got to swallow your pride," Schlegel says. "Especially around here, people lose their status and they feel they don't fit in."

This is the face of poverty after the Great Recession. Millions of Americans such as Schlegel now find themselves among the suddenly poor. The recession that led to an explosion in poverty began in December 2007 and ended — officially, anyway — in June 2009. It not only made the poor poorer, it snagged those who thought they had worked themselves out of poverty and blindsided those who never thought they would be caught in its net. Today, 15% of the USA— one in six Americans — are considered poor, the highest rate of poverty since 1993. Now among the poor are the college-educated, the former middle-class worker, the suburbanite and the homeowner.

They've been hit by layoffs, cuts in work hours, health problems and other crises. They've gone through savings and 401(k)s. They live off food stamps or other government benefits and rely on help from family members and friends. Numbers released this month by the Census Bureau show staggering trends:

•A record number of Americans are living in poverty — 46 million. That's more than at any time since the Census Bureau began tracking poverty data in 1959.

•The number of families below the poverty line rose 18%, from 7.3 million in 2006 to 8.6 million in 2010. The poverty line last year was a household income of $22,314 or less for a family of four.

•More people living in the nation's suburbs are poor. The number of poor people living in the suburbs of metropolitan areas rose 24%, from 14.4 million in 2006 to 17.8 million last year. By comparison, the number of poor living in central cities rose by 20%.

•Those who have not worked during the previous 12 months make up an increasing share of the poor. The number of poor people 16 and older who had not worked during the previous year increased by 28% from 2006 to 2010.

"It's all about joblessness," says Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There's just not enough work." The solution to poverty is simple, Smeeding says: It's a job.

'It was the only thing I had left'
 
Texas+Poverty.jpg


picture-17.png


Concentrations of poverty... Again. Texas looks rather pathetic.

source
 
So how are we defining poverty here - living in a tent? Do we realize that the Native Americans did that for centuries? Is anybody actually starving here?

I know that things are worse than they were. But are they so bad that we can't survive? Survival is an absolute standard - one that we seem to be ignoring. Perhaps the solution to poverty in America is for everyone to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. Lower our expectations of what we 'need'. Need means survival. Need does not mean '20k a year or more'.
 
I imagine the 20 to 30 million illegal aliens that the American social system is forced to address has an impact on the poverty statistics but how did LBJ's media touted "war on poverty" work out? Can we admit that the hundreds of billions of taxpayer funded federal programs promoted by democrats were a failure?
 
1%'ers gettin' richer, other 99% gettin' poorer...
:eek:
New Record: 1 in 15 People in U.S. Now Rank As the Poorest of the Poor
November 3, 2011 WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poorest poor have climbed to a record high — 1 in 15 people — spread widely across metropolitan areas as the housing bust pushed many inner-city poor into suburbs and other outlying places and shriveled jobs and income.
New census data paint a stark portrait of the nation's haves and have-nots at a time when unemployment remains persistently high. It comes a week before the government releases first-ever economic data that will show more Hispanics, elderly and working-age poor have fallen into poverty. In all, the numbers underscore the breadth and scope by which the downturn has reached further into mainstream America. "There now really is no unaffected group, except maybe the very top income earners," said Robert Moffitt, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. "Recessions are supposed to be temporary, and when it's over, everything returns to where it was before. But the worry now is that the downturn — which will end eventually — will have long-lasting effects on families who lose jobs, become worse off and can't recover."

Traditional inner-city black ghettos are thinning out and changing, drawing in impoverished Hispanics who have low-wage jobs or are unemployed. Neighborhoods with poverty rates of at least 40 percent are stretching over broader areas, increasing in suburbs at twice the rate of cities. Once-booming Sun Belt metro areas are now seeing some of the biggest jumps in concentrated poverty. Signs of a growing divide between rich and poor can be seen in places such as the upscale Miami suburb of Miami Shores, where nannies gather with their charges at a playground nestled between the township's sprawling golf course and soccer fields. The locale is a far cry from where many of them live.

One is Mariana Gripaldi, 36, an Argentinian who came to the U.S. about 10 years ago to escape her own country's economic crisis. She and her husband rent a two-bedroom apartment near Biscayne Bay in a middle-class neighborhood at the north end of Miami Beach, far from the chic hotels and stores. But Gripaldi said in the past two years, the neighborhood has seen an increase in crime. "The police come sometimes once or twice a night," she said in Spanish. "We are looking for a new place, but it's so expensive. My husband went to look at a place, and it was $1,500 for a two-bedroom, one bath. I don't like the changes, but I don't know if we can move."

About 20.5 million Americans, or 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, make up the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the official poverty level. Those living in deep poverty represent nearly half of the 46.2 million people scraping by below the poverty line. In 2010, the poorest poor meant an income of $5,570 or less for an individual and $11,157 for a family of four. That 6.7 percent share is the highest in the 35 years that the Census Bureau has maintained such records, surpassing previous highs in 2009 and 1993 of just over 6 percent. Broken down by states, 40 states and the District of Columbia had increases in the poorest poor since 2007, and none saw decreases. The District of Columbia ranked highest at 10.7 percent, followed by Mississippi and New Mexico. Nevada had the biggest jump, rising from 4.6 percent to 7 percent. Concentrated poverty also spread wider.

MORE
 
I've lived as many years of my life in poverty as I have in prosperity.
I'm still here.
It's doable.
Sure it sucks but it won't kill you.
Unless you're really really stupid.
 
...the taxpayer.


The question is this: where's the poverty in America? I'd really like to help fix it, but I'm having a hard time finding it.

I used to think I found it in Appalachia - but my standards have since been lowered, and I no longer agree with the census bureau on what constitutes poverty.

I also checked in the big city... I see a lot of crime, and a lot of bad stuff, but the poverty situation seems more or less under control. Yes there are people in poverty, but there seems to be plenty of help available to them already.

Anyone know where there's serious poverty in this country?
 

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