What Is Poverty in the United States Today?

[longknife]

By Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield

Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox:

Each year for the past two decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has reported that over 30 million Americans were living in “poverty.” In recent years, the Census has reported that one in seven Americans are poor. But what does it mean to be “poor” in America?

To the average American, the word “poverty” implies significant material deprivation, an inability to provide a family with adequate nutritious food, reasonable shelter, and clothing. Activists reinforce this view, declaring that being poor in U.S. means being “unable to obtain the basic material necessities of life.” The news media amplify this idea: Most news stories on poverty feature homeless families, people living in crumbling shacks, or lines of the downtrodden eating in soup kitchens.

Read the full piece here. Executive Summary: Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?

Does this mean that The War on Poverty is working? Or simply that we've thrown away billions of dollars on social engineering that isn't working?

 

[oldfart]

By Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield

Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox:

Each year for the past two decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has reported that over 30 million Americans were living in “poverty.” In recent years, the Census has reported that one in seven Americans are poor. But what does it mean to be “poor” in America?

To the average American, the word “poverty” implies significant material deprivation, an inability to provide a family with adequate nutritious food, reasonable shelter, and clothing. Activists reinforce this view, declaring that being poor in U.S. means being “unable to obtain the basic material necessities of life.” The news media amplify this idea: Most news stories on poverty feature homeless families, people living in crumbling shacks, or lines of the downtrodden eating in soup kitchens.

Read the full piece here. Executive Summary: Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?

Does this mean that The War on Poverty is working? Or simply that we've thrown away billions of dollars on social engineering that isn't working?

I read your link the Heritage Foundation piece, then I read the link in that piece to the actual "scholarly" article. and then I tried to read some of the footnotes back to the original sources to determine how closely the HF representation was to the actual report.

The short reply is that at each step of this regression, the case for your thesis becomes weaker and more contrived. There is not much left except for ideological baggage at the bottom. This is pretty much what happens with every Heritage Foundation piece, no actual scholarly work has gone on there in decades.

Now if you think you still want to argue this piece, I'll make you a deal. First read back through the material and find the quotation in the original Census studies that claims that possession of certain assets means that a family is not deprived. Second, quote me the percentages of all American households with internet access and the percentage of poverty level households with internet access.

I await your reply.