VERBATIM
Much has been made of the persistent poverty rate in the United
States more than 50 years after President Lyndon B. Johnson announced
the launch of an "unconditional war on poverty in America."
But the actual living conditions of the more than 45 million
people considered "poor" by the Census Bureau today "differ greatly"
from popular conceptions of poverty, according to a report from The
Heritage Foundation.
The reason: In determining who is below the poverty line, the
Census Bureau considers earned income almost exclusively, ignoring
nearly all government means-tested spending on the poor.
Yet U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $22 trillion on
anti-poverty programs, in 2012 dollars, since 1964. Last year the
federal government administered over 80 means-tested welfare programs
providing cash, housing, food, medical care, and other social services
to poor and low-income Americans.
These programs include Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, and food stamps.
"Because the official Census poverty report undercounts welfare
income, it fails to provide meaningful information about the actual
living conditions of less affluent Americans," Heritage observed.
The foundation used data from various government reports to compile these eye-opening facts about "poor" Americans:
- Nearly three-quarters of households classified as living in
poverty in a recent year have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or
more.
- 80 percent have air conditioning.
- Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television.
- Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more.
- 43 percent have Internet access.
- 92 percent have a microwave.
- Nearly half live in separate single-family houses or
townhouses, 40 percent live in apartments, and just 9.5 percent live in
mobile homes or trailers.
- 42 percent own their own homes, and their average home has three bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
- Over two-thirds of their homes have more than two rooms per person.
- The average poor American has more living space than the
average individual — average citizen, not average poor citizen — in
France, Sweden, Germany, or the United Kingdom.
- A U.S. Department of Agriculture survey found that in a
recent year, about 83 percent of poor households reported that they had
enough food to eat, and 82 percent of poor adults said they were never
hungry at any time in the prior year due to a lack of money for food.
"The poor clearly struggle to make ends meet, but they are
generally struggling to pay for cable TV, air conditioning, and a car,
as well as food for the table," conclude Robert Rector and Rachel
Sheffield, the report's authors. Rector is a senior research fellow and
Sheffield is a policy analyst in the Institute for Family, Community,
and Opportunity at Heritage.
"The average poor person is far from affluent, but his
lifestyle is equally far from the images of stark deprivation purveyed
by advocacy groups and the mainstream media."
