One in seven Americans, doesn't begin to reflect how widespread poverty really is in this country

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Mon Sep-27-10 03:01 PM
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One in seven Americans, doesn't begin to reflect how widespread poverty really is in this country

The Census Bureau's 43.6 Million Poor Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg
by Jon Stepanian September 25, 2010 08:40 AM (PT)
http://uspoverty.change.org/blog/view/the_census_bureaus_436_million_poor_are_just_the_tip_of_the_iceberg

With the recession over, the stock market towering above 10,000 and all the right wing outcry for extended tax cuts for the rich, you might assume we're well on our way to economic recovery. But that really isn't the case, is it?

When we have 43.6 million people living in poverty, the greatest number in our country's recorded history, it seems pretty hard to argue that the Great Recession is behind us. Worse still is that this number, one in seven Americans, doesn't begin to reflect how widespread poverty really is in this country. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau defined poverty for a family of four as earning less than $21,954 in 2009. If a family of four made $22,000 that year, they weren't considered poor and consequently weren't counted in that 43.6 million. Can a family of four get by on $22,000? How about $30,000? When we talk about poverty, are we fooling ourselves into believing that the real number of people living in poverty isn't much, much higher?

Generally when we think about poverty, we think about those of us who are unable to meet basic needs or those of us who are going into debt to do so. Things like food, housing, transportation, utilities, clothing and health care add up quickly. But that's not how the Census Bureau calculates poverty statistics. For it, poverty has an absolute cutoff and statistics are formulated with no regard to regional expenses, changes in food prices or even taxes. It's clearly not the most accurate system. What we need in its place is a metric to judge poverty based on the cost of necessities.

The Self-Sufficiency Standard, formulated by Dr. Diana Pearce, the director of the Center for Women's Welfare, does just this. It calculates the income a family needs to meet its bare minimum expenses without any outside assistance and it does this on a county by county, state by state basis (pdf). http://www.hwcli.com/documents/358.pdf

What this metric includes are "no frills" expenses like health care, clothing, rent and transportation. (Not included are expenses like car repairs, fast food and personal savings.) The result is a much more accurate measure of the minimum income needed for individuals and families to just get by.

Currently, the Self-Sufficiency Standard has been calculated for 37 states and the District of Columbia. It shows a steep difference between the actual cost of affording basic necessities and the federal poverty line. (Find the Self-Sufficiency Standard for your state at http://www.selfsufficiencystandard.org/pubs.html )

For example, according to the Self-Sufficiency Standard the average single adult living in Brooklyn needs to have an annual income of at least $28,367 (pdf) to pay for his or her basic necessities. http://www.selfsufficiencystandard.org/docs/New%20York%20State%202010.pdf In contrast, the federal poverty threshold (pdf) for the same individual is $10,830, a disparity of 262 percent. http://www.coverageforall.org/pdf/FHCE_FedPovertyLevel.pdf

More staggering still is the gap in other areas of the country, like my home county of Suffolk, New York. In pricey Suffolk, the Self-Sufficiency Standard for a family of four is $86,245 — a whopping 391 percent greater than the federal poverty threshold.

The Self-Sufficiency Standard (like the forthcoming non-binding federal supplemental poverty measure) is a fairly new way of looking at poverty. Its adaptation is not universal, hence the fact that it's only been calculated in 37 states.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that the vast amount of data already collected points to a much greater number of real poor and struggling in this country; perhaps a much greater number than we're willing to admit to ourselves.

When I spoke with Dr. Pearce about this subject, she made some alarming points. For example, three in 10 California households (pdf) http://www.selfsufficiencystandard.org/docs/CA%20Overlooked%20%20Undercounted%202009.pdf and one in three Mississippi households (pdf) http://www.mepconline.org/images/admin/spotedit/attach/0/Executive_Summary_Overlooked_and_Undercounted.pdffall below the Self-Sufficiency Standard.

These numbers indicate families sacrificing necessities like food, home heating, medical care and even shelter to pay other bills. To try and get a sense of what this all meant nationally, I asked Dr. Pearce what portion of Americans she thought were below the Self-Sufficiency Standard. Her response: one in four.