Incomes of 16 million fall 50% below poverty line
Since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown more than any other segment of the population
The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line, and the gulf between the “haves” and “have-nots” continues to widen.
A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 — half the federal poverty line — was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.
Among the states with the most people in severe poverty, Ohio ranked sixth with 657,415. California was first with 1.9 million people, and rounding out the top five were Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois.
Washington, D.C., has a higher concentration of severely poor people — 10.8 percent in 2005 — than any of the 50 states, even hurricane-ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana.
A few miles from the Capitol, 60-year-old John Treece pondered his life in deep poverty as he left a food pantry with two bags of free groceries.
Plagued by myriad ailments from years of manual labor, Treece has been unable to work full time for 15 years. He’s tried unsuccessfully to get benefits from the Social Security Administration, which he said disputes his injuries and work history.
Treece, who says he earned about $5,000 in 2006 doing odd jobs, lives hand-to-mouth in a $450-a-month room at a boarding house in a high-crime neighborhood. Thanks to food stamps, the food pantry and help from relatives, Treece said he never goes hungry. But toilet paper and other items that require cash are tougher to come by.
“Sometimes it makes you want to do the wrong thing, you know,” Treece said, referring to crime. “But I ain’t a kid no more. I can’t do no time. At this point, I ain’t got a lotta years left.”
Treece remains positive and humble despite his situation.
“I don’t ask for nothing,” he said. “I just thank the Lord for this day and ask that tomorrow be just as blessed.”
The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That’s 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. The analysis also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 28 states and in suburban and rural areas as well as urban counties.
The plight of the severely poor comes amid economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged. Meanwhile, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.
These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty — the highest rate since at least 1975.
The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily in the past three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown “more than any other segment of the population,” according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The growth spurt, which leveled off in 2005, reflects how hard it is for low-skilled workers to earn their way out of poverty in an unstable job market that favors skilled and educated workers. It also suggests that social programs aren’t as effective as they once were at catching those in financial trouble.
About one in three severely poor people are younger than 17, and nearly two out of three are women. Female-headed families with children account for a large share of the severely poor.
Nearly two out of three people (10.3 million) in severe poverty are white, but blacks (4.3 million) and Latinos (3.7 million) make up disproportionate shares. Blacks are nearly three times as likely as non-Latino whites to be in deep poverty, while Latinos are roughly twice as likely.
Severe poverty is worst near the Mexican border and in parts of the South, where 6.5 million severely poor residents are struggling to find work as manufacturing jobs disappear. The Midwestern Rust Belt and areas of the Northeast also have been hard hit after numerous plant closings.
At the same time, low-skilled immigrants with impoverished family members are increasingly drawn to the South and Midwest to work in the meatpacking, food-processing and agricultural industries.
“What appears to be taking place is that, over the long term, you have a significant permanent underclass that is not being impacted by anti-poverty policies,” said Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian policy-research group.
Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal policy-research group, disagreed. “What you see in the data are more and more single moms with children who lose their jobs and who aren’t being caught by a safety net anymore,” Sherman said.
About 1.1 million such families account for roughly 2.1 million deeply poor children, Sherman said.
After fleeing an abusive marriage in 2002, Marjorie Sant, 42, moved with her three children from Arkansas to Raleigh, N.C. For most of 2005, they lived off food stamps and the $300 a month in Social Security Disability Income for her son who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
“I found myself in a hole and didn’t know how to get out,” Sant said.
In the summer of 2005, after social workers warned that she could lose her kids, Sant then brought her youngest two to a temporary housing program while her oldest son moved to California to live with a daughter from a previous marriage.
So for 10 months, Sant learned basic office skills. She now rents a house, works two jobs and earns about $20,400 a year.
Sant is proud of where she is, but she knows that “if something went wrong, I could well be back to where I was.”
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