How poor are america's poor people?

Question

The topic of poverty and welfare and redistribution of wealth is often a topic of conversation on YA. But a new study shows that America's poor are not so bad off and many of their problems are of their own doing. For example:

There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and fathers are absent from the home.

In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year—the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year— nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.

Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock.

Thoughts

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg2064.cfm

Answer 1

I dont consider the choice of cable, inetrnet and cell phones instead of food, clthing and health insurane poverty - I consider it stupid

Answer 2

For many of you I hope you never face poverty. I doubt you would survive it.
I am not denying there are those that abuse the system. There are. There are many of our poor busting their butts to come out of it.
I disagree about the absent father part. The women I know raising their children on their own are doing well.
Welfare should have 2 year time limit. In that time the recipient will pursue education or whatever to bring themselves up. Counseling and help should be made available. One of the problems with the system is when the welfare recipient makes a step forward the system instead of supporting it takes essential services away. With the 2 year plan this would not happen. Drug testing would be mandatory along with rehab for those with a problem.. I would rearrange the food stamp program. You would not be able to buy junk food and have provision for TP and personal hygiene products.
Let's not forget that our disaster of a health plan has created another type of poor. Those that had a decent life and then came upon a catastrophic illness that wiped them out financially.

Answer 3

America's poor are relatively well off when compared to the poor of 3rd world countries. However, to blame the poor themselves for their poverty is disingenuous. I would argue that it's the working poor we have to worry about. Those people who scrape by on near minimum wage and live paycheck to paycheck. If there is any sort of problem, they can go under very quickly.

I don't know how some people do it. I worked 70 hours a week at 2 low wage jobs and still couldn't pay the bills consistently. Without my parents helping me, I would never have been able to go to college so I could get a better job.

Upward sociall mobility in this country is very, very difficult.

Answer 4

Single households and lazy parents are the cause of poverty. There are no children starving here, they have food and have heater and air conditioner and clothes on their back. What is so poor about that? Just because they don't live in a big house or have cars that makes the poor stricken? In my native country, children sleep on the ground in their little shack where an entire family lives! Many times there is no food and I've seen many children as young as 5 working in the streets. That is true poverty, Democrats should start worrying more about global poverty instead of the supposed poverty here.

Answer 5

If there are rich people than there will be poor people too... a free market economy can not decimate poverty; at the same time, we absolutely do not want the middle class to shrink and stats are showing that the middle class in America is shrinking.

If your conclusions (and a very conservative source and not necessarilly a "economic" source) claims that a impoverished person is only poor because they want to be or that they are too lazy or too irresponsible to make money then the logical solution is to just ignore poverty. I think that is irresponsible because it does hurt the middle class.

I could care less for WHY a person is poor... this is not personal to me. I look it as a economic reality and the reasons for poverty do not really matter. What does matter is what it does to our economy and our society. Historically, surges of poverty increase a society's crime and sickness costing the rest of the nation to pay more for security and infrastructure.

Let's look at the big picture rather than the character of poverty unless we have solutions to repair the character to ward of the price that society will have to pay.

Answer 6

I have never seen a newspaper with no "help wanted" ads.
In this country, unless you are physically or mentally unable to work, you have plenty of opportunity.
People in the US are free to be what they want, if that means not paying attention in school or having several babies by several deadbeat fathers by the time you reach 20, then you are accountable for what you have become.
Some people complain about how much the US spends on NASA or the Military while there are poor people in the US, but what would happen if instead we gave every poor family a lump sum of $20,000.00, (of our tax $$), to "help them out"?
My prediction is it would be quickly blown on Plasma TVs, loud sound systems and/or drugs and you would still find the same people in poverty 1 year later.

Answer 7

Liberal policies encourage single women to have children out of wedlock (in NY a woman can easily make 30K with 4 kids and all the free programs). Problem is, what about the men, and then all these children? Her male children are likely to end up on the street or in jail. Nice plan, President Johnson.

The Liberals here in NY (Governor Spitzer) have a plan: Beef up Social Services! Unbelievable. Keep doing more of the same until you get a different result.

Answer 8

"official poverty" is a joke and everyone knows it. I would like to see any family of four living anywhere in the united states on $22,000 dollars a year. which is above the current poverty line. I would call $35,000 dollars a year the poverty line. Most of the jobs available to these people are $10 an hour or below. 2000 hours times $10 an hour equals $20,000 dollars, which is below the poverty line.

Answer 9

America's 'poor' can look pretty 'rich' compared to the poor of other countries, due to exchange rate distortions, but, if you look at purchasing power parity, yes, America's poor are genuinely poor, and even the middle class is far from being 'rich.' America is not a rich country, America is an expensive country.

Unemployment and underemployment are certainly contributors to poverty, but unemployment is not always or even often voluntary in such cases, and is exacerbated by global competition for low-skilled jobs - both in the form of offshoring (in which the job exits the country to go to the foreign worker), and in the form of foreign workers coming to America illegally.

Answer 10

Having traveled the world, I can say with absolute confidence and conviction that the poorest of the poor in the US of A have it better than the middle class of most of the world! In fact, it is because we live in such an affluent society that we have such poor people. In other countries, people as worthless, lazy and weak as the scum on our streets would be aloud to starve to death or be thrown into prison on any charge that would stick to get them off the streets! I pity the children who must suffer for their parents negligence....