The vicious political
grandstanding about tens of millions of “lazy” chronically poor people is
hogwash.
Most people who get poor also
get out of poverty fairly quickly.
Less than 4% of Americans are chronically
poor, that is, poor for a long time, for a year or two or more. That’s something
like 11 million out of 317 million Americans.
And, yes, about 15% of
Americans were poor last year, with income below the official poverty line—for a
family of four, it’s $23,492 a year.
But the thing is, most of the
folks who were poor last year were poor only for a short time—the median is 6.6
months, meaning that half of the people who were poor last year were on the
skids only for a few months, possibly between jobs.
So, the 15% figure for folks in
poverty is the “annual poverty rate,” it’s AN AVERAGE for the year. Lots of
folks were in and out of poverty, and very few of the poor folks were in that
category for an extended time.
Brad Plumer, on WashingtonPost.com, recently reported these eye-opening details, and also this astonishing fact: during 2009 to 2011,
nearly a third of Americans were officially poor for at least two months. That’s
almost 100 million people, probably including some people you know.
These insights about poverty
are dynamite. They kick the you-know-what out of the ignorant, disdainful
argument against government aid for the poor because "it's just handing
over money to chronic deadbeats who live their lives in government-subsidized
poverty."
Why hasn’t this report been
getting top billing by the news media and the cable TV talking heads?
Some other thoughts:
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