The Census Bureau took a step toward redefining what is considered poor in America when it released several alternative measurements of poverty, fundamentally revising a one-size-fits-all formula developed in the 1960s by a civil servant. The alternatives reflect a growing consensus among experts in the poverty field that the old formula does not adequately measure poverty in the 21st century.
Under a complex series of eight alternative measurements, the Census Bureau calculated that in 2009, the number of Americans living in poverty could have been as few as 39 million or as many as almost 53 million. Under the official calculation, the census estimated that about 44 million were subsisting on incomes below the poverty line of about $21,750 for a family of four. The alternatives generally set the poverty threshold higher, as much as $29,600 for a couple with two children. In September, the census estimated the nation's poverty rate in 2009 was 14.3 percent. Under the alternatives, it could have been as low as 12.8 percent or as high as 17.1 percent.
The current formula was devised by Mollie Orshansky, a civil servant in the Social Security Administration who took the cost of a "thrifty food basket" for a family of four and multiplied it by three. Her formula has been updated for inflation. It continues to harbor a number of quirks traceable to attitudes of a half-century ago, such as a $1,000 reduction in the poverty line for people older than 65, largely because Orshansky, an economist and statistician, believed older people eat less. For one alternative recommended by the NAS panel, the number of elderly people considered poor would rise by more than 3 million, largely because expenses would include large out-of-pocket medical costs more typical of senior citizens.
According to current methods of calculation estimates released on Tuesday by the US Census Bureau figures show 19 million lived in extreme poverty. It also shows that one in five children in the United States lives in poverty, with almost half of them living in extreme poverty. There were more than 10 million low-income working families in the United States, an increase of nearly a quarter million from the previous year. The number of working women with an unemployed husband more than doubled from 2.4 percent to 5.4 percent between 2007 and 2009.This means there is a growing proportion of working families in which women -- who earn less money, on average, than men -- are the primary breadwinners. It also noted that nearly 1 in 3 working families in the US have difficulty meeting basic needs such as buying groceries and paying utility bills.
The Working Poor Families Project has discovered that the number of working poor in the United States is higher than ever and it continues to increase. As wages are forced down, a record number of working Americans are finding themselves forced to turn to food stamps and to other government anti-poverty programs. Millions of Americans have been forced to take part-time jobs in order to supplement their incomes. Millions of others have been forced to take part-time jobs because that is all they can find.
7 Signs of Poverty
1 In 2009, total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined in the United States.
2 Since the year 2000, the US has lost 10% of middle income jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle income jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle income jobs. Meanwhile, the population is getting larger.
3 As 2007 began, only 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but now 42 million Americans are on food stamps and that number keeps rising every single month.
4 Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.
5 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.
6 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
7 The number of Americans working part-time jobs "for economic reasons" is now the highest it has been in at least five decades.
The United States is a nation with a very small privileged class of ultra-wealthy and a very large class of "workers" that is just barely trying to survive.
The number of Americans making $50 million or more, the top income category was 74 in 2009. But that’s only part of the story. The average wage in this top category increased from $91.2 million in 2008 to an astonishing $518.8 million in 2009. That’s nearly $10 million in weekly pay! In the midst of the recession year of 2009 , the average pay of the very highest-income Americans was more than five times their average wages and bonuses in 2008. These 74 people made as much as the 19 million lowest-paid people in America, who constitute one in every eight workers.
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"Basically, the Obama administration has cared about taking care of Wall Street and the people who put him into office as opposed to the problems of poor people," California State University professor Paul Sheldon Foote said. Obama has done nothing to help on savings and people are making near-zero interest on their savings. The economic pressure and unemployment are getting so high that American people, even in rural areas, cannot form families and that has led to many cultural problems such as single-parent families. It is harder for the farmers to make a living so the rural areas have a bleak future for the poor people. The US academic warned of mounting inequality and a widening gap between the poor and the rich, noting that the US is becoming a country with a very small number of rich people and a large number of poor people.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/158841.html
According to Hacker and Pierson, the concentration of economic wealth at the top is irrefutable. They say the top 1 percent received 36 percent of all gains in household income from 1979 until the recession began in 2008. Just between 2001 and 2007, the share of income gains was more than 53 percent for this tiny minority of Americans. In other words, 53 cents of every dollar in additional income pocketed by Americans during this time went only to the richest one in 100 households. Put in another way, the authors point out, the top one in 1,000 households received more than 20 percent of all after-tax income gains, compared to 13.5 percent received by the bottom 60 percent of households. Despite all the rhetoric we’ve heard about the success of trickle-down economics, the rewards for America’s affluent have not resulted in wealth filtering down to the poor.
http://www.crestonnewsadvertiser.com/articles/2011/01/04/r_m3hxylhqgy6c4tokq4ezw/index.xml
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