Poverty in a Rich Country
In 2007, the poverty line for a family of three, with children under 18, was defined as an annual income of $16,530 or less. For a family of four, also with children under 18, the threshold was $21,203.3 Some 13 million children are poor, and there are nearly 29 million who qualify as low-income—four out of every ten children in the United States.4 A low-income family has an annual income below 200 percent of the poverty line. Nearly 90 million Americans, almost a third of the U.S. population, qualify as low-income.5
The difference between being poor and being low income is more subjective than one might think. Low-income families on the cusp of poverty could easily find themselves worse off than families officially considered poor. For example, a family in San Francisco faces higher living expenses than a family in rural Arkansas, but if the San Francisco family’s income puts it above the poverty level, the household doesn’t qualify for the same amount of government assistance as the Arkansas family below the poverty line. Which family is better off? Costs of living vary widely across the country—the cost of living in San Francisco is much higher than in rural Arkansas—but the poverty line is set at the same level everywhere.
While data on income and living expenses are important, they provide very little insight into what it feels like to be poor. Families in poverty feel like they are always perched on the brink of disaster. Tiny, inconspicuous hurricanes occur all the time in their lives. One small thing is all it takes to be blown away. One car accident. One medical emergency. One burst pipe. One robbery. One small piece of bad luck.
Living on the edge of disaster means choosing whether to turn off the heat in winter or cut food consumption until spring. It means running home from school because the streets are too dangerous to walk. It means longer commutes to work because it’s too expensive to keep a car. It means no one to watch the kids because everyone you know—family, friends, neighbors, church—is living on the edge. It takes stamina to live on the edge and keep going regardless of how exhausted you feel.
Opportunities are denied to people on the edge. Opportunities are denied because the cost of child care is out of sight. Opportunities are denied because few good teachers want to teach at the schools in your neighborhood. Opportunities are denied because the neighborhood has been redlined for so long that no one wants to buy a home or invest there. Opportunities are denied because the bus route that used to serve your neighborhood has been eliminated to pay for tax cuts that benefit someone else.
Opportunities to interview for a better job are missed because of inflexible work schedules. Opportunities for training and skill development are offered to someone else whose human capital is a better investment. Opportunities are exaggerated by politicians who speak of a growing economy as if everyone were sharing in it equally. Opportunities are weak or illusory when jobs do not pay enough to live on.
Few images of what it feels like to live on the edge show it better than the television images broadcast from Hurricane Katrina. These images stand alongside portraits of Dust Bowl families or breadlines snaking around city blocks in the Great Depression. The television cameras found a family in New Orleans atop the roof of their home, the floodwaters rising, holding a sign that read, “We are Americans too.”
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3 The Census Bureau updates poverty-income thresholds annually: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html.
4 Ayana Douglas-Hall and Michelle Chau (2008), Basic Facts about Low-income Children: Birth to Age 18, National Center for Children in Poverty: http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_845.html.
5 From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half (2007), Center for American Progress.
