Yesterday, the revelation that poverty had reached 15.1 percent in 2010 (poverty figures refer to the year prior to their release) got a lot of attention, but, seen in context, it wasn’t really a big deal. The official poverty percentage hit its low in 1972 at 11.1 percent and since then has moved within a narrow range, hitting a high of 15.2 percent in 1982.
Compared those wiggles in the graph of poverty with this headline: “POVERTY HALVED. Drops 20 Percentage Points in Just Twelve Years.” That’s what happened from 1949 to 1961. We didn’t know it at the time, but the numbers have been calculated retrospectively, using the 1950 census to determine the poverty rate in 1949—it was 41 percent. In President Kennedy’s first year in office, 1961, it was 21 percent. And what was going on in between? Oh, yes. Those boring, complacent Eisenhower years, when the government didn’t try to help the poor. Unlike now.
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The definition of poverty should correspond to what we, as a society, want to do about it. If we want to make sure that people have sufficient resources to survive, e.g., sufficient food and shelter, then an absolute definition makes sense. If however we want to be sure that people are not located too far behind the ‘average’ person, then a relative measure makes sense. Personally, I’d say we certainly want to accomplish #1 and probably to some extent #2. So, the current definition isn’t all that bad even though we understand full well that poverty today doesn’t mean what it did 50 years ago.
It goes without saying that in the Eisenhower years were also under an immigration moratorium. When you import a bunch of poor people, Horatio Alger stories be damned, they tend to stay poor.
Chris,
I’m sorry but your statement does not logically follow. 1st, we all immigrants (even native Americans), and mostly poor immigrants at that. 2nd, some of the greatest periods of industrial growth occurred when immigration policy was free and encouraged. Ever hear of the Gilded Age?
I’m a liberal but people on the right need to revisit their philosophy and the work of Ricardo…
Poverty today is much better, not much worse, than in 1949. Poor people in 1949 did not own their homes, have two cars and a garage, have television and Game Boys, and etcetera that “poor” people today think are normal. The poor I worry about are the homeless and those who are deprived of basic things such as food and medicine. I think the statistics are the real problem. They should be revised to show as “poverty” those who really are poor. Someone living in a house that has three bedrooms, two baths, a dishwasher and DirectTV, someone who has enough food to be overweight and who has a warm coat for the winter, that person is not poor. Statistics tell the story we want them to tell. Somebody somewhere gets to say what “poverty” means, and I contend that this definition is the real problem. If “poverty” meant homeless and starving, then I would respond to the statistic, but I can’t get very worked up about people who live solid middle class lives.
OK, here’s my question: does it make sense to compare poverty numbers from 50 years ago with poverty numbers now? We care about poverty – I think – both because of what it conveys about absolute levels of deprivation and what it conveys about how separated you are from the rest of society – whether you live in a fundamentally different and worse way both materially and non-materially, whether you and your kids are separated from the institutions of the middle class and rich, and whether you (or they) have the ability to escape poverty. Obviously in terms of relative deprivation, being a poor person now is better than being poor in 1961, but what about that second part? Is it worse now to be poor in terms of social mobility, isolation, and the distance from the way you live vs. the way middle class or rich people people live?