4
in 5 in USA face near-poverty, no work
Hope Yen, AP Business Writer
4:12 p.m. EDT July 28,
2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — Four out of 5
U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for
at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an
elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to The
Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the
widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing
jobs as reasons for the trend.
The findings come as President
Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in
recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of
opportunity" and reverse income inequality.
As nonwhites approach a
numerical majority in the U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the
disadvantaged should be best focused — on the affirmative action that
historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major
impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status
for all, regardless of race.
Hardship is particularly
growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial
group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point
since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63% of whites called the
economy "poor."
"I think it's going to get
worse," said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal
region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a
fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend, but it doesn't generate much
income. They live mostly off government disability checks.
"If you do try to go apply
for a job, they're not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to even
go to work," she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better to do
than to get on drugs."
While racial and ethnic
minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty
rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic
insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the
government's poverty data, engulfing more than 76% of white adults by the time
they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by
the Oxford University Press.
The gauge defines
"economic insecurity" as a year or more of periodic joblessness,
reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150% of the
poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises
to 79%.
Marriage rates are in decline
across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in
poverty has risen to the level of black ones.
"It's time that America
comes to understand that many of the nation's biggest disparities, from
education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic
class position," said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who
specializes in race and poverty. He noted that despite continuing economic
difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama's
election, while struggling whites do not.
"There is the real
possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to
highlight and address inequality on a broad front," Wilson said.
———
Nationwide, the count of
America's poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15% of the
population, due in part to lingering high unemployment following the recession.
While poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by
absolute numbers the predominant face of the poor is white.
More than 19 million whites
fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for
more than 41% of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor
blacks.
Sometimes termed "the
invisible poor" by demographers, lower-income whites generally are
dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60% of the
poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in
the industrial Midwest and spread across America's heartland, from Missouri,
Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.
Buchanan County, in southwest
Virginia, is among the nation's most destitute based on median income, with
poverty hovering at 24%. The county is mostly white, as are 99% of its poor.
More than 90% of Buchanan
County's inhabitants are working-class whites who lack a college degree. Higher
education long has been seen there as nonessential to land a job because
well-paying mining and related jobs were once in plentiful supply. These days
many residents get by on odd jobs and government checks.
Salyers' daughter, Renee Adams,
28, who grew up in the region, has two children. A jobless single mother, she
relies on her live-in boyfriend's disability checks to get by. Salyers says it
was tough raising her own children as it is for her daughter now, and doesn't
even try to speculate what awaits her grandchildren, ages 4 and 5.
Smoking a cigarette in front of
the produce stand, Adams later expresses a wish that employers will look past
her conviction a few years ago for distributing prescription painkillers, so
she can get a job and have money to "buy the kids everything they
need."
"It's pretty hard,"
she said. "Once the bills are paid, we might have $10 to our name."
———
Census figures provide an
official measure of poverty, but they're only a temporary snapshot that doesn't
capture the makeup of those who cycle in and out of poverty at different points
in their lives. They may be suburbanites, for example, or the working poor or
the laid off.
In 2011, that snapshot showed
12.6% of adults in their prime working-age years of 25-60 lived in poverty. But
measured in terms of a person's lifetime risk, a much higher number — 4 in 10
adults — falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives.
The risks of poverty also have
been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55,
coinciding with widening income inequality. For instance, people ages 35-45 had
a 17% risk of encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; that risk
increased to 23% during the 1989-2009 period. For those ages 45-55, the risk of
poverty jumped from 11.8% to 17.7%.
Higher recent rates of
unemployment mean the lifetime risk of experiencing economic insecurity now
runs even higher: 79%, or 4 in 5 adults, by the time they turn 60.
By race, nonwhites still have a
higher risk of being economically insecure, at 90 percent. But compared with
the official poverty rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure
are among whites, with more than 76% enduring periods of joblessness, life on
welfare or near-poverty.
By 2030, based on the current
trend of widening income inequality, close to 85% of all working-age adults in
the U.S. will experience bouts of economic insecurity.
"Poverty is no longer an
issue of 'them', it's an issue of 'us'," says Mark Rank, a professor at
Washington University in St. Louis who calculated the numbers. "Only when
poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience
that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader
support for programs that lift people in need."
The numbers come from Rank's
analysis being published by the Oxford University Press. They are supplemented
with interviews and figures provided to the AP by Tom Hirschl, a professor at
Cornell University; John Iceland, a sociology professor at Penn State
University; the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute; the U.S. Census
Bureau; and the Population Reference Bureau.
Among the findings:
—For the first time since 1975,
the number of white single-mother households living in poverty with children
surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and
faster rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites. White single-mother
families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011, comparable to the
number for blacks. Hispanic single-mother families in poverty trailed at 1.2
million.
—Since 2000, the poverty rate
among working-class whites has grown faster than among working-class nonwhites,
rising 3 percentage points to 11% as the recession took a bigger toll among
lower-wage workers. Still, poverty among working-class nonwhites remains
higher, at 23%.
—The share of children living
in high-poverty neighborhoods — those with poverty rates of 30% or more — has
increased to 1 in 10, putting them at higher risk of teenage pregnancy or
dropping out of school. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 17% of the child
population in such neighborhoods, compared with 13% in 2000, even though the
overall proportion of white children in the U.S. has been declining.
The share of black children in
high-poverty neighborhoods dropped from 43% to 37%, while the share of Latino
children went from 38% to 39%.
—Race disparities in health and
education have narrowed generally since the 1960s. While residential
segregation remains high, a typical black person now lives in a nonmajority
black neighborhood for the first time. Previous studies have shown that wealth
is a greater predictor of standardized test scores than race; the test-score
gap between rich and low-income students is now nearly double the gap between
blacks and whites.
———
Going back to the 1980s, never
have whites been so pessimistic about their futures, according to the General
Social Survey, a biannual survey conducted at the University of Chicago. Just
45% say their family will have a good chance of improving their economic
position based on the way things are in America.
The divide is especially
evident among those whites who self-identify as working class: 49% say they
think their children will do better than them, compared with 67% of nonwhites
who consider themselves working class, even though the economic plight of
minorities tends to be worse.
Although they are a shrinking
group, working-class whites — defined as those lacking a college degree —
remain the biggest demographic bloc of the working-age population. In 2012,
Election Day exit polls conducted for the AP and the television networks showed
working-class whites made up 36% of the electorate, even with a notable drop in
white voter turnout.
Last November, Obama won the
votes of just 36% of those non-college whites, the worst performance of any
Democratic nominee among that group since Republican Ronald Reagan's 1984
landslide victory over Walter Mondale.
Some Democratic analysts have
urged renewed efforts to bring working-class whites into the political fold,
calling them a potential "decisive swing voter group" if minority and
youth turnout level off in future elections. "In 2016, GOP messaging will
be far more focused on expressing concern for 'the middle class' and 'average
Americans,'" Andrew Levison and Ruy Teixeira wrote recently in The New Republic.
"They don't trust big
government, but it doesn't mean they want no government," says Republican
pollster Ed Goeas, who agrees that working-class whites will remain an
important electoral group. His research found that many of them would support
anti-poverty programs if focused broadly on job training and infrastructure
investment. This past week, Obama pledged anew to help manufacturers bring jobs
back to America and to create jobs in the energy sectors of wind, solar and
natural gas.
"They feel that
politicians are giving attention to other people and not them," Goeas
said.
Copyright 2013 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten or redistributed.
No comments:
Post a Comment