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From: glosser@ut-ngp.UUCP (glosser)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: A statistic on poverty
Message-ID: <1132@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 15-Dec-84 13:26:30 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.1132
Posted: Sat Dec 15 13:26:30 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Dec-84 03:23:06 EST
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Organization: U.Texas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
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<>

In a recent article Alien (alien@gcc-opus) was trying to make
the claim that entitlement programs (especially food stamps)
where helping as far as the war on poverty is concerned. I will
agree with him in that sense, because without entitlements things
would be worse. However, when he makes the following statement about
including benefits (food stamps, etc.) when determining who is
below the poverty level (8.8% of the population below the
poverty level if benefits are included, 22% if not.) he shows
a great misunderstanding of what the issues are vis a vis the
incidence of poverty in this country:

>What does this mean?
>
>First, Poverty in the US is not as bad of a problem as
>some people would want you to believe.  Clearly, 8.5% is
>not as bad as 22%.  (Did you ever stop to wonder where
>those 22% were?  I mean, if there were that many, wouldn't
>you know a lot of them?)
>


First, it might enlighten people to see what the %'s of people
below the poverty level have been from 1970 through 1982 for the
total population as well as the white and black population:

              % of Persons Below the Poverty Level
(source Economic Report of the President - 1984 Page 252)

Year	Total	White	Black

1970	12.6	9.9     33.5
1971	12.5 	9.9	32.5
1972	11.9	9.0	33.8
1973	11.1	8.4	31.4
1974	11.2	8.6	30.3
1975	12.3	9.7	31.3
1976	11.8	9.1	31.1
1977	11.6	8.9	31.3
1978	11.4	8.7	30.6
1979	11.7	9.0	31.0
1980	13.0	10.2	32.5
1981	14.0	11.1	34.2
1982	15.0	12.0	35.6

Also, consider the following data for families below the poverty
line. (source Economic Report of the President - 1984 Page 252)

Where:

Total = Total % of all families in the USA
Female = Total % of all Female headed families in the USA
White = Total % of all White families in the USA
White F. = Total % of all White Female headed families in the USA
Black = Total % of all Black families in the USA
Black F. Total % of all Black Female headed families in the USA

                % of Families Below the Poverty Line

Year	Total	 Female	    White  White F.   Black  Black F.
1970    10.1      32.5       8.0    25.0       29.5   54.3
1971    10.0      33.9       7.9    26.5       28.8   53.5
1972     9.3      32.7       7.1    24.3       29.0   53.3
1973     8.8      32.2       6.6    24.5       28.1   52.7
1974     8.8      32.1       6.8    24.8       26.9   52.2
1975     9.7      32.5       7.7    25.9       27.1   50.1
1976     9.4      33.0       7.1    25.2       27.9   52.2
1977     9.3      31.7       7.0    24.0       28.2   51.0
1978     9.1      31.4       6.9    23.5       27.5   50.6
1979     9.2      30.4       6.9    22.3       27.8   49.4
1980    10.3      32.7       8.0    25.7       28.9   49.4
1981    11.2      34.6       8.8    27.4       30.8   52.9
1982    12.2      36.3       9.6    27.9       33.0   56.2

From the above, issues such as what the poverty incidence
would be without food stamps, horror stories of people
spending all their entitlement money on soft drinks and hard
liquor, etc. detract from what I consider to be one of the main
issue associated with poverty in this country: The incidence
of poverty shows that RACISM and SEXISM is alive and well in
the United States!

In other words, when: roughly one out of two black female
headed households are below the poverty line; three times
as many female headed households as compared to male headed
households are below the poverty line (this also means three
out of ten female headed households as well); as well as three
tenths of the black population living below the poverty level,
something is seriously wrong!

Stuart M. Glosser