Admittedly, I haven't read the entire document as of yet, but the I find the chart on page 4 (Figure 14) of the
Census Bureau report on poverty very interesting. It seems that the percentage of the U.S. population in poverty has not varied all that greatly since the early 1960's. LBJ's War on Poverty clearly knocked the number down very early on, but I do not see any evidence (at least from this graph) that the myriad of subsequent anti-poverty programs made much of a dent in baseline poverty. Why?
Also, skip to page 18 and you find this shocker:
Quote:
Work Experience
Among all workers aged 16 and older,
neither the poverty rate (7.0 percent)
nor the number in poverty (10.7 million)
in 2010 were statistically different from 2009.
People aged 16 years and older who
worked some or all of 2010 had a
lower poverty rate than those who
did not work at any time***8212;7.0 percent
compared to 23.9 percent (Table 4). In
2010, the poverty rate among fulltime,
year-round workers (2.6 percent)
was lower than the rate for those who
worked less than full time, year round
(15.0 percent).
Among those who did not work at
least 1 week last year, the poverty rate
and the number in poverty increased
to 23.9 percent and 20.7 million in
2010 from 22.7 percent and 18.9 million in 2009 (Table 4).
Those who did not work in 2010 represented 66.0
percent of people aged 16 and older in
poverty, compared with 36.2 percent
of all people aged 16 and older.
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Unemployment breeds poverty. Got it. But the difference between those who worked at least some of the time and those who did not work at all is staggering. The "working poor" seems to be, in actuality, a very small class indeed. Which is a good thing. But there's a core of poverty here that looks like a floor, and whatever it is we've been doing hasn't been effective.