Why some people receiving government advantages don't consider themselves poor – though poverty rates have risen because the COVID-19 pandemic

Since 25 years my research As a cultural anthropologist, he took me into the homes and neighborhoods of individuals living in poverty in cities and rural communities across the United States

To higher understand their each day lives, I also frolicked in grocery stores, churches, nightclubs, parks and clinics.

I asked countless questions, from how regularly they moved to what varieties of advantages they received.

But of all of the answers, none have confused me greater than the one I get once I ask, “Are you poor?”

No one ever answered “yes.”

One mother was almost outraged. “My kids have food in their bellies, a roof over their heads and clothes on their backs, so no, I’m not poor,” she told me.

An honest way of life

Who then decides who’s poor in America?

The answer is the federal government who spent almost the last 60 years It attempts to define and measure poverty and ultimately provide money to supply families with a financial safety net.

Although lots of the people I interviewed over time didn’t consider themselves poor, their income made them eligible to receive government subsidies equivalent to money assistance, Medicaid, or public housing, and thus were placed into categories that the federal government considers poor classified.

Poverty within the United States is predicated on an individual's ability to buy the things they need to realize a certain way of life. According to 2022 U.S. Census Bureau data — probably the most recent available — Poverty For a family of 4, the utmost annual income was $29,960. For a single person that is poverty line was $14,891.

To put these numbers in perspective: The median US household income in 2022 it was $74,580 – greater than twice the poverty line. Around 38 million Americans – almost 12% – live at or below the poverty line. And 16.1% of kids under 6 live in poverty.

Measuring US Poverty

In the early Sixties Mollie Orshanskya government statistician, developed the civil servant Poverty measure this continues to be used today.

In her previous statistical work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Orshansky had calculated that individuals spend a few third of their income on food. The so-called breadbasket method calculated income levels to define poverty based on the price of feeding a family.

Since the Sixties, the poverty rate has remained consistently between 11 and 15 percent.

But the measurement has some shortcomings.

Consider the regional cost differences for a similar products. At the start of 2024, for instance, a a loaf of bread in Los Angeles, California, it cost $4.73, while in Louisville, Kentucky, the identical bread cost $2.46.

Another mistake is defining what constitutes a family of 4.

The cost of feeding a family of 4 might be significantly different for a single mother with three school-age children than for a married couple with two young children.

The politics of poverty

As of 2011, the second metric that Census Bureau officials use is additional poverty rate.

Unlike the official poverty rate, the supplemental rate takes under consideration various varieties of government assistance, equivalent to food, housing and energy assistance, in addition to tax credits and stimulus payments. The measure also calculates regional differences in the price of living, medical care and housing.

Although different, these two measures are commonly utilized by politicians to attain points over their political rivals.

This was the case in September 2023, when the Census Bureau found that the The additional rate had skyrocketed from 7.8% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022, the biggest increase since 2010.

The same measurement for the Proportion of kids The number of individuals living in poverty also reached 12.4%, greater than doubling from 5.2% in 2021.

When the numbers were released by the Census Bureau in September 2023, former President Donald Trump immediately attacked President Joe Biden, comparing the decline in poverty during his presidency to a rise in poverty during Biden's term.

But Trump disregarded Key facts.

The Additional tariffs fell from 14% in 2016, before Trump took office in 2017, to 9.2% in his last full 12 months as president 2020. However, the decline was due largely to coronavirus relief payments made available to eligible individuals and families in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The relief payments also helped reduce the number of individuals in poverty under the Biden administration.

But those COVID-19-era payments expired in 2021. Without that help — and the assistance of Biden's American Rescue Plan — the share of individuals considered poor rose 2022 under Biden. This 12 months's sharp increase got here on the heels of last 12 months, when the proportion of individuals in poverty reached its lowest level on record.

Temporary relief?

Since the Great Depression, U.S. presidents have made fighting poverty a priority of their administrations. Franklin D. Roosevelt specifically did this the New Deal and Lyndon Johnson had the Great Society.

But up to now, the problem of fighting poverty within the 2024 presidential campaign has been overshadowed by Trump's legal problems Biden's ineptitude to force an end to the Israel-Hamas war.

In the world's richest country, greater than 23 million people – just over one in 10 adults – live in households where there isn't enough to eat, in response to March 2024 Census Bureau data Household Pulse Survey. And lots of these people have jobs.

Despite Trillion US dollars Despite the federal government's inability to supply a security net for everybody in need, despite spending on lifting people out of poverty – $1.9 trillion in 2022 alone – it appears to have failed To provide a security net for all those in need.

As Economist Bob Pfeiffer once said: “Our social system is designed to make life more comfortable, not to solve poverty.”