U.S._Poverty

Poverty in the United States According to dictionary.com the definition of Poverty is the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor; indigence. In this paper I will look at how the United States determines when a person is living in poverty; how they become poor and if race, demographic location etc. plays a role in their living conditions. There are two slightly different versions of the federal poverty measure. The first is the poverty threshold. The Census Bureau measures poverty using a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty. The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes and does not include capital gains or noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps). Poverty thresholds were originally derived in 1963-1964. Thresholds vary according to size of the family and ages of the members. The same thresholds are used throughout the United States and do not vary geographically. A family is considered to be in poverty if the total family income is less that the threshold appropriate for that family. There are certain groups that poverty status cannot be determined. These groups include: * Someone under the age of 15 and are not living with a family member * Institutional group quarters (such as prisons or nursing homes) * College dormitories * Military barracks * Living situations without conventional housing (and who are not in shelters.) The table below lists the Poverty Thresholds for 2010 The second way that poverty is measured is by poverty guidelines. They are issued each year in the Federal Register by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The guidelines are a simplification of the poverty thresholds for use for administrative purposes, for instance, determining financial eligibility for certain federal programs. The Federal Register notice of the 2011 poverty guidelines is available. The poverty guidelines (unlike the poverty thresholds) are designated by the year in which they are issued. For instance, the guidelines issued in January 2011 are designated the 2011 poverty guidelines. However, the 2011 HHS poverty guidelines only reflect price changes through calendar year 2010; accordingly, they are approximately equal to the Census Bureau poverty thresholds for calendar year 2010. Poverty guidelines are used as an eligibility criterion by a number of federal programs. A few examples of the programs they are used for are: Community Food and Nutrition Program, Medicare, Children’s Health Insurance Program and Family Planning Centers. The official poverty lines vary with size of family. Below is a table showing the poverty lines with each size of family from one member to eight and above. Persons in Family | 48 Contiguous States and D.C. | Alaska | Hawaii | 1 | $10,890 | $13,600 | $12,540 | 2 |  14,710 |  18,380 |  16,930 | 3 |  18,530 |  23,160 |  21,320 | 4 |  22,350 |  27,940 |  25,710 | 5 |  26,170 |  32,720 |  30,100 | 6 |  29,990 |  37,500 |  34,490 | 7 |  33,810 |  42,280 |  38,880 | 8 |  37,630 |  47,060 |  43,270 | For each additional person, add |    3,820 |    4,780 |    4,390 | SOURCE:  Federal Register, Vol. 76, No. 13, January 20, 2011, pp. 3637-3638 The poverty rate represents an average over the entire population, and does not really tell us who is well off or who is worse off. To determine this it is necessary to examine poverty levels for particular groups. In regards to race, the poverty rates for all blacks and Hispanics remained near 30 percent during the 1980’s and mid-1990’s. After this period the rate began to drop. In 2000, the rate for blacks dropped to 22.1 percent and for Hispanics to 21.2 percent. This was the lowest rate for both groups since the United States began measuring poverty. Unfortunately by 2009 (Table 1) the poverty rate for both groups began to rise. The poverty rate for black families was 25.8 . This compares with the smaller percentage of white families which is closer to 9.4 percent. Hispanic families are in line with the black families with poverty levels at 25.3 percent. The poverty rate for Asians was 12.5 percent. With this information it is clear that the black and Hispanic races have the highest poverty rates in the U.S. Sadly it is the families with women as head of household with no spousal support that suffer the most. The income levels are less and most of these families do include children. Some reasons as to why this occurs is that wages of women remain lower and their value in the workplace, especially women with children is considered less by employers. In 2009, the poverty rate for families was 11.1 percent. Of all family groups, poverty is the highest among those headed by single women. In 2009, 29.9 percent of all female headed families compared to 5.8 percent of married couple families. Children under the age of 18 are also at high risk of poverty. Their poverty rate was 20.7 percent in 2009. Another reason for the continuance of poverty and the lack of response to it can be found in the inability of people from upper levels of income to accept that poverty is not the fault of the person or families. In the United Sates there is the perception that one could do better if they wanted to. Circumstances, education opportunities, disability and serious illness all contribute to poverty levels. There are so many ways people can find themselves in situations where the loss of a job, overwhelming bills, or a natural disaster can force families below the poverty level. Last, like the women head of household issue, there are limited opportunities for people of different races and ethnicities to pull themselves out of poverty. There have been improvements through role models and educational opportunities, but it is a slow process. Hispanics in particular find issues such as the language barrier to be hampering their efforts to improve along with their skill sets. More effort needs to be made to help them improve their skills and the language proficiency. Table 1 Poverty among Individuals by the Official Poverty Measure, 2009 Characteristic | No. (in 000) | Poverty Rate (%) | Age | | | All | 43,569 | 14.3 |    Under 18 | 15,451 | 20.7 |    18–64 | 24,684 | 12.9 |    65 and over | 3,433 | 8.9 | Race/Ethnicity* | | |    White, not Hispanic | 18,530 | 9.4 |    Black alone or in combination | 9,944 | 25.8 |    Hispanic origin+ | 12,350 | 25.3 |    Asian alone or in combination* | 1,746 | 12.5 | Region of Residence | | |    Northeast  | 6,650 | 12.2 |    Midwest | 8,768 | 13.3 |    South | 17,609 | 15.7 |    West | 10,542 | 14.8 |   *Federal surveys now allow respondents to report more than one race, which makes possible two basic ways of defining a race group. A group such as Asian may be defined as those who reported Asian and no other race (the single-race concept) or those who reported Asian regardless of whether they also reported another race (the race-alone-or-in-combination concept). This table shows data using the race-alone approach, though the Census Bureau notes, "The use of the single-race population does not imply that it is the preferred method of presenting or analyzing data. The Census Bureau uses a variety of approaches." +Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race. Source: U.S. Census, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009, P60-238. REFERENCES U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. (01/21/11). The 2011 HHS Poverty Guidelines. ASPE.hhs.gov. Retrieved April 22, 2011from http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/11povertyhtml U.S. Census Bureau. (12/28/10).How the Census Bureau Measures Poverty.Census.gov. Retrieved April 23, 2011 from http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measure.html Institute for Research on Poverty.(10/26/10.Who is poor' irp.wisc.edu. April 24, 2011 from http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3.htm