- This is the stereotype of poverty in America. It’s also statistically rare and does not reflect a failure of the social safety net.
by James A. Bacon
Americans equate poverty with deprivation. Families wearing rags, living in tarpaper shacks, going hungry and lacking the basic tools to participate in mainstream American life — basically, the whole Great Depression “Grapes of Wrath” thing. A vast poverty industry perpetuates the notion that extreme hardship is not only common but spreading across the land and the progressive worldview of America as a fundamentally unjust society draws succor from it, so it is rarely challenged.
But “poverty” as usually discussed in the United States does not describe peoples’ actual living conditions, it describes their taxable income. People below a certain “poverty threshhold” are declared to be poor. But that definition is meaningless as a characterization of how people actually live because it excludes massive transfer payments and social services programs designed to cushion “the poor” from deprivation. Thus, Medicaid will spend $276 billion in federal dollars this year to provide health care services to the poor. Other mandatory programs (not including Social Security and Medicare), most of which are means tested, are budgeted for $713 billion. Transfer payments to the poor amount to $1 trillion in a $15.2 trillion economy. (Please note: Those numbers do not include Social Security, Medicare, discretionary federal funding for the poor, state Medicaid matching funds, state funding for the poor, or private charity.)
So, how do “poor” people live? What is their material standard of living? It varies, of course. Some truly are destitute, though that condition is usually the result of temporary misfortune, thus transitory, or the consequence of substance abuse. For the most part, the poor enjoy many of the same material amenities that middle-class Americans enjoyed a generation or two ago. That’s the message of a new Heritage Foundation report, “Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?” Write Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield:
In 2005, the typical household defined as poor by the government had a car and air conditioning. For entertainment, the household had two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR. If there were children, especially boys, in the home, the family had a game system, such as an Xbox or a PlayStation. In the kitchen, the household had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker.
The home of the typical poor family was not overcrowded and was in good repair. In fact, the typical poor American had more living space than the average European. The typical poor American family was also able to obtain medical care when needed. By its own report, the typical family was not hungry and had sufficient funds during the past year to meet all essential needs.
Poor families certainly struggle to make ends meet, but in most cases, they are struggling to pay for air conditioning and the cable TV bill as well as to put food on the table. Their living standards are far different from the images of dire deprivation promoted by activists and the mainstream media.
Destitution does exist. But it’s usually the result of substance abuse. I’ve visited the houses of poor people that are spare but livable. And I’ve seen crack houses where every stick of furniture, indeed every belonging but a mattress, has been hawked or pawned for cash. The latter is a tragedy for those involved, especially innocent children, but it does not represent a failure of American society, nor should it justify increased entitlements during a period of fiscal austerity.
More common, I would wager, are instances in which people game the system. They get themselves declared disabled, then earn cash on the side as carpenters, hair dressers, landscapers or whatever — never reporting their income. But the poverty lobby isn’t the slightest bit interested in these cases. For those who make a living in the compassion industry, the more poor people the better.
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