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Poverty refers to the condition of not having the means to afford basic human needs such as clean water, nutrition, health care, clothing and shelter.This is also referred to as absolute poverty or destitution. Relative poverty is the condition of having fewer resources or less income than others within a society or country, or compared to worldwide averages.

Before the industrial revolution, poverty had mostly been the norm Poverty reduction has historically been a result of economic growth as increased levels of production, such as modern industrial technology, made more wealth available for those who were otherwise too poor to afford them. Also, investments in modernizing agriculture and increasing yields is considered How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the "Plague" of Poverty in America by Robert Rector Backgrounder #2064

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 37 million poor persons living in this country in 2005, roughly the same number as in the preceding years.[4] According to the Census report, 12.6 percent of Amer­icans were poor in 2005; this number has varied from 11.3 percent to 15.1 percent of the population over the past 20 years.[5]

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 37 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.[6]

The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various gov­ernment reports:

•Forty-three 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.

•Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, 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; 31 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.

•Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than 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 than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.

While the poor are generally well nourished, some poor families do experience temporary food shortages. But even this condition is relatively rare; 89 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, a third of poor households have both cellular and landline telephones. A third also have telephone answering machines. At the other extreme, however, approxi­mately one-tenth have no phone at all. Similarly, while the majority of poor households do not expe­rience significant material problems, roughly 30 percent do experience at least one problem such as overcrowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty get­ting medical care.

The remaining poverty in the U.S. can be reduced further, particularly poverty 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 1.5 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 require work and encourage marriage, poverty among children would drop substantially.

However, while renewed welfare reform can help to reduce poverty, under current conditions, such efforts will be partially offset by the poverty-boost­ing impact of the nation's immigration system. Each year, the U.S. imports, through both legal and illegal immigration, hundreds of thousands of additional poor persons from abroad. As a result, one-quarter of all poor persons in the U.S. are now first-genera­tion immigrants or the minor children of those immigrants. Roughly one in ten of the persons counted among the poor by the Census Bureau is either an illegal immigrant or the minor child of an illegal. As long as the present steady flow of poverty-prone persons from foreign countries continues, efforts to reduce the total number of poor in the U.S. will be far more difficult. A sound anti-poverty strategy must seek to increase work and marriage, reduce illegal immigration, and increase the skill level of future legal immigrants.

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 2005 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.[7]

But if poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the 37 million people identified as being "in poverty" by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor.[8] 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

Chart 1 shows the ownership of property and consumer durables among poor households. The data are taken from the American Housing Survey for 2005, conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Census Bureau, the Survey of Income and Program Partici­pation (SIPP) conducted by the Census Bureau, and the Residential Energy Consumption Survey con­ducted by the U.S. Department of Energy.[9]

As the chart shows, some 43 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 1969 and is in good repair. The median value of homes owned by poor households was $95,276 in 2005 or 70 percent of the median value of all homes owned in the United States.[10]

Some 73 percent of poor house­holds own a car or truck; nearly a third own two or more cars or trucks. Eighty percent have air conditioning; by contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the general U.S. population had air conditioning. Nearly nine in ten poor households own microwaves; more than 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 of poor house­holds have telephone answering machines. Roughly a third have both cell phones and conventional landline telephones. More than a third have per­sonal computers. While these numbers do not sug­gest lives of luxury, they are notably different from conventional images of povertyHousing 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 2 shows, 49 percent of poor house­holds live in single-family homes, either unat­tached single dwellings or attached units such as townhouses. Another 41 percent live in apart­ments, and 10 percent live in mobile homes.[11]

Housing Space

Both the overall U.S. population and the poor in America live, in general, in very spacious housing. As Table 1 shows, 71 percent of all U.S. households have two or more rooms per tenant. Among the poor, this figure is 66 percent.

Crowding is quite rare; only 2.4 percent of all households and 5.6 percent of poor households are crowded with more than one person per room.[12] 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.[13]

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.[14] Rea­sonably comparable international square-footage data are provided by the Housing Indicator Program of the United Nations Center 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.[15](See Table 2.)

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 the appendix table for more detailed information.)

Some critics have argued that the comparisons in Table 2 are mislead­ing.[16] 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 3 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 2 and the appendix table.

As Table 3 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 1.6 percent of all poor households. About one per­cent of all households and 2.3 percent of poor households have other "severe physi­cal problems." The most common are repeated heating breakdowns and multiple 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 4 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.)

Poverty and 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. It is often 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.[17] 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.[18] Over-consumption 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.[19] 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 $72,000 for a family of four in today's dollars).

Table 4 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.[20] 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 under-consume vitamin E, vitamin B-6, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, and zinc, a virtually identical under-consumption 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.