Saturday, June 23, 2012

who won the war?

There are two overlapping poverty problems in the United States. One is the prevalence of low-wage workers. The other is those with no work. Recent reports have shown that hunger and homelessness are on the rise in the United States

Low-wage work encompasses people with incomes below twice the poverty line—not poor but struggling all the time to make ends meet. They now total 103 million, which means that fully one-third of the population has an income below what would be $36,000 for a family of three. The wage of the median-paying job barely grew—by one measure going up only about 7 percent over the 38 years from 1973 to 2011. Half the jobs in the country now pay less than $33,000 a year, and a quarter pay less than the poverty line of $22,000 for a family of four.

In the bottom tier are 20.5 million people—6.7 percent of the population—who are in deep poverty, with an income less than half the poverty line (below $9,000 for a family of three). Some 6 million people out of those 20.5 million have no income at all other than food stamps. The National Coalition for the Homeless claims that each year 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness. The percentage of people in deep poverty has doubled since 1976.

In the 60s President Lyndon Johnson launched the war against poverty. The level of poverty in the nation was at 11.1 percent in 1973. It was 11.3 percent in 2000. The U.S Census Bureau currently claims that 15.1% of the population is living in poverty - the highest number since 1959. It is apparent from the figures that poverty won the war.

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