What Is Poverty In America?

Mercedes Diane Griffin Forbes, civil rights columnist for the Washington DC Examiner, takes on the Heritage Foundation’s dismissive report on poverty in America.

“No matter how extreme some may think the idea of poverty is,” she writes, “for millions, it is not merely an idea born out of media hype, it is in fact a reality.”

The evidence is surely on her side. But her own idea of poverty seems to me warped by what I guess I’d call a middle-class bias.

She starts from an hypothesis ventured by the head of the Census Bureau’s Poverty Statistics Branch. To wit, the recession-driven jobs crisis may be the single largest factor in the increased poverty rate.

Key figure here: Nearly 1.8 million more poor working-age people had gainful employment for, at most, one week last year.

Griffin Forbes adds some of the dismal figures coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Persistently high unemployment rates — over 9% for all but two months since May 2009.

Near-record rates for those who’ve been actively looking for work for at least 27 weeks — more than 2 million of them so long that they’ve exhausted even the maximum extended unemployment insurance benefits the federal government has been funding.

Disproportionately high unemployment rates for blacks and Hispanics. Even higher rates for teenagers.

And look, says Griffin Forbes, at the results of the Heldrich Center’s latest work trends survey.

These show not only “the sting” of unemployment and underemployment, but lower pay for those who do find jobs. Specifically:

• More than half of those who found work settled for less pay and nearly a third took a cut in job-related benefits.
• The median starting salary for new college graduates dropped by 10% between 2006-8 and 2009-10.

So what’s her big takeway?

” Poverty in America … is about the ‘American Dream’ becoming increasingly unattainable for millions, who by all accounts have done everything they were supposed to do to ‘make it.’”

Who are these millions?

“Middle class [families] finding that they can no longer meet their basic needs and relying on credit cards to keep the lights on and pay the rent … the college educated finding that they cannot pay their student loan debt.”

These people are indeed suffering from the impacts of the recession. Also from longer-term economic trends that have dramatically shifted income growth to the wealthiest fraction of Americans.

But they aren’t, to my mind, what poverty in America is.

Poverty has a whole lot more to do with not being able to meet your basic needs at all. Painful tradeoffs between food, rent, health care, clothes for the kids, etc. Or so little money that even tradeoffs are impossible.

It’s about not having the education or the resources to go to college, even with financial aid.

It’s about growing up in communities where the American Dream has long been out of reach for all but a few extraordinarily fortunate individuals.

A pre-recession study for the Center on American Progress found that upward mobility was more a myth than a reality for large numbers of poor children — especially black children.

Nearly 63% of those who were born to families in the bottom fifth of the income scale remained there as adults. The percent was higher than for white children, even when factors like parents’ education levels, working hours and assets were accounted for.

I’m as concerned as Griffin Forbes about hard-working Americans who had a purchase on middle-class life and now find themselves at the brink of homelessness — or worse.

But their plight isn’t, as she claims, a “dirty little secret.” We read about it all the time.

And it certainly isn’t, “in a nutshell,” what poverty in America is.

DC Poverty Rate Hits 19.2 Percent

A couple of weeks ago, the Census Bureau released the results of its 2010 Current Population Survey.

Much attention here in the District of Columbia to the increase in our local poverty rate. Up to 19.9%, we were told. Trailing only Mississippi and Louisiana.

That poverty rate was based on a small sample, which means it could be off by quite a bit. The two-year average Census recommends yields a rate of 18.9%. The even more reliable three-year average is 18.1%.

But these rates, of course, don’t tell us whether poverty has been trending up or down. Nor anything about specific impacts.

So I waited for the results of the American Community Survey — partly because its one-year figures are reasonably reliable, but also because there are lots more state-level figures.

Now we’ve got them. Here’s some of what we learn, combined with my analyses based on figures from prior years.

Poverty Rate

In 2010, the District’s poverty rate did indeed go up, though not by quite as much as the one-year CPS figure indicates.

According to the ACS, the rate was 19.2% — 0.8% higher than in 2009 and 3.9% higher than for the nation as a whole.

The new rate means that about 109,620 District residents lived below the Census Bureau’s very low poverty thresholds. These vary by household size and composition. But, to give you a sense of how low they are, the average threshold of a family of four was $22,314.

Child Poverty Rate*

The already very high child poverty rate increased to 30.4%. This is 8.8% higher than the national rate and 7.7% higher than in 2007, just before the recession set in.

Translated into more human terms, the new rate means that about 30,500 D.C. children lived in poverty last year.

One tiny bright spot. The percent of children in deep poverty, i.e., in households with incomes below 50% of the poverty threshold, dropped by 2.6%.

It is still, however, a very high 16.2% — 6.6% higher than the national rate.

Race/Ethnicity Gaps

We see once again that poverty is not an equal opportunity condition here in the District or in the nation as a whole.

In 2010, 8.5% of non-Hispanic white District residents lived in poverty. The poverty rate for black residents was more than three times greater — 27.1%. The rate for Hispanic residents was nearly double the non-white Hispanic rate — 14.7%.

Deep poverty rates also varied — from 5.9% for non-Hispanic whites to 14% for blacks, with Hispanics in the middle at 8%. All three of these rates are greater than the 2009 rates. The increase for Hispanics — 4% — was markedly greater than for the other two groups.

Not surprisingly, we see similar gaps in median average household income. For non-Hispanic white households, the median was $99,220 — an eye-popping $45,052 more than the national median for these households.

The District’s black household median income was more than two and a half times lower than the median for all District households — $37,430, as compared to $60,903.

Hispanic households fared better, though not nearly so well as non-Hispanic white households. Their 2010 median income was $60,798.

In short, these are mostly grim figures — and a far cry from the “one city” Mayor Gray envisions.

To my mind, the child poverty rate rings the loudest alarm bells because we’ve got volumes of research showing that children who live in poverty have much higher risks of poor health, developmental delays, academic difficulties and other problems;

These, the research shows, pave the way for lifelong poverty — and thus another generation of children who are born with two strikes against them.

* All the child poverty figures are for individuals up to the age of 18.

UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this, the Coalition on Human Needs published a state-by-state list of poverty rates reflecting the new ACS report and its reports for the four years preceding.

According to the list, the District’s 2010 poverty rate is higher than any state’s. Alabama and Kentucky tie for second place, with rates of 19% all but two states’, Mississippi’s and New Mexico’s.

A separate CHN list provides state-by-state child poverty rates. The District’s rate is the second highest, topped by Mississippi’s 32.5%.

Census Bureau Reports Record Number Of Poor Americans

The Census Bureau opened its press briefing on the just-released 2010 income, poverty and health insurance data with a brief statement from the director. The yearly figures, he said, show “how day-to-day people are faring under changing economic conditions.”

By almost every measure, the answer is not well at all. Between 2009 and 2010:

• The poverty rate rose from 14.3% to 15.1%. The new rate is the highest since 1993.
• The number of people in poverty increased by 2.6 million. The total number now — 46.2 million — is the largest in the 52 years Census has been publishing such figures.
• The percent of people in deep poverty, i.e., with incomes at or below 50% of the applicable poverty threshold,* increased to a record-high 6.7%.

As in the past, poverty rates were considerably higher in some population groups than others. For example:

• The child poverty rate increased to 22% — up from 18% in 2007.
• The number of children in poverty increased by 950,000 to a 16.4 million.
• Nearly 7.4 million of these children (9.9%) were in deep poverty.
• The poverty rate for blacks was well over two-and-a-half times the rate for non-Hispanic whites — 27.4% as compared to 9.9%.
• The deep poverty rate for blacks was more than three times higher — 13.5% as compared to 4.3%.
• The poverty rate for Hispanics was 26.6% and the deep poverty rate 10.9%.

A reporter asked the Census Bureau experts whether they could explain why the poverty rate rose. Was told that the Bureau produced statistics, not explanations. One factor suggested, however, was the growing number of people who’d had no — or virtually no — work during the entire year.

In 2010, 86.7 million people over the age of 16 worked less than one week — an increase of more than 3.4 million over 2009 and of more than 11.3 million over 2007. Not surprisingly, 23.9% of these potential workers lived below the poverty threshold.

Seems to me another arrow in the quiver of those of us who want Congress to pass the President’s jobs bill.

Yet the bill, as he himself says, “can’t solve all our nation’s woes.” He’s referring, as White House communications indicate, to the dwindling economic security of the middle class.

The economic woes of low-income Americans pre-date the recession too. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, the poverty rate has been rising for most of this decade — in boom years as well as downturns.

We’ll need a comprehensive strategy — and a smart one — to do something about this. We’ll need a broad-based commitment. Things as they are, I’m not holding my breath.

* The Census Bureau’s poverty thresholds are more complex than the poverty guidelines used in determining eligibility for federal benefits programs. Using one of the Bureau’s weighted averages, we see that a family of four in deep poverty would have had an income of no more than $11,157 for the year.

Workers Wanted, But Only If Working

Young job seekers often complain about a catch-22. Employers want to see work experience on the resume, but how can they get it when no one will hire them?

The National Employment Law Project reports another, truly perverse version of the catch-22. Employers and staffing agencies, with help from online job posting services, are screening out applicants because they’re unemployed.

If you need a job, they don’t want you. Period.

For about a month this spring, NELP reviewed job postings on four of the biggest online sites. It looked for postings identified by employer or staffing agency while also, it says, “seeking a diverse sample from across the United States.” This, I take it, means that it didn’t look at all postings from an identifiable source.

NELP found more than 150 “exclusionary” ads — most of them specifically stating that applicants had to be currently employed. Postings were by employers of all sizes and in all parts of the country. Jobs were white collar, blue collar and service sector and “at virtually every skill level.”

Tip of the iceberg, as NELP acknowledges.

In some cases, for example, the exclusion isn’t communicated in an online posting, but by human resources directors to the headhunters they’re using.

There are also reported cases where applicants got as far as an initial interview only to be told that they’d been out of work too long. As with some of the online postings, “too long” is apparently more than six months.

At this point, nearly 6.3 million jobless workers who are actively looking have been unemployed for at least 27 weeks, i.e., long enough to be arbitrarily screened out of jobs they’re otherwise qualified for.

So unemployment discrimination, as NELP calls it, could — and probably does — affect a broad spectrum of jobless workers.

But not equally.

As I wrote back in February, the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative found that long-term unemployment rates were highest for older workers — and had increased exponentially.

In December 2010, 55% of jobless workers ages 55-64 had been unemployed for longer than the magic six-months cutoff. Percent even higher for those 65 and older.

Panelists at a public meeting convened by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cited similar disproportionate impacts on women, people with disabilities and racial and ethnic minorities.

At this point, the unemployment rate for blacks is double the rate for whites — about what it was at the time of the meeting.

Comparable figures on long-term unemployment are hard to come by. Last spring, however, the percent of blacks unemployed for more than a year was 8% higher. A surprising 10% higher rate for Asian Americans too.

Thus, “any practice that disadvantages currently unemployed workers relative to similar employed workers will have a disproportionate negative impact on people of color,” said Algernon Austin, the Economic Policy Institute’s lead expert on race, ethnicity and the economy.

The very fact of the meeting suggests that EEOC is considering whether policies and practices that exclude jobless people from applicant pools are a violation of the equal opportunity protections in federal civil rights laws.

There are several things it can do if it decides they are. But proving “disparate impact” can be tough. And EEOC has been short on resources for a very long time.

On the legislative front, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Congressman Henry Johnson (D-GA) have introduced a bill that would, with limited exceptions, prohibit employers and employment agencies from screening out applicants or otherwise denying employment to people just because they’re unemployed.

Needless to say, this bill is going nowhere fast. Will probably die in the Republican-controlled House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

NELP and its partners have nevertheless ginned up attention to the cruel irony of denying jobless workers a chance to work just because they’re jobless. Researching this posting, I found lots of relevant news articles and editorials in both local and national press.

Some employers have reacted by deleting the current or recent employment requirement from their job ads. Others probably will. All this means, I think, is that the screening will go on in other ways.

Unless, of course, hiring agencies and human resources directors decide that the efficiency they purportedly achieve by ignoring candidates who don’t have jobs can deny them the best qualified, most motivated workers they could find.