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December 1987

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President's Message (Arlene Ellis)
Vote Count
Helping the Poor -- Whose Repsonsibility? (Jean Aoki)
Consensus Meeting on Meeting Basic Human Needs
Hunger Numbers
Poor: Myths vs Reality
City Funds Meeting
Initiative Forum
Water Conference
Welcome Back
Meeting Basic Human Needs: Committee Report (Jean Aoki)
Letters (M.R. R.)
Be a Part of the Aloha Voter

The Poor: Myths vs Reality

(The following is excerpted from a report, Rethinking the Nature and Purpose of Public Assistance, submitted to Governor Mario M. Cuomo, State of New York, December 1986.)

The Stereotypes

The stereotype of the typical poor person is that he or she is a member of a minority group, lives in an urban ghetto, has never married but has many children, never had a job and does not want to work, and lives permanently on welfare. While people like this undoubtedly exist, they are a tiny fraction of those in poverty.

The typical poor person is quite different. Below we examine some of the myths about the poor, using data from the 1984 and 1985 Current Population Survey, the 1980 Census, and other sources.

MYTH 1: Most Poor People Are Able to Work But Do Not

In fact, most poor people who can work do work. About two-thirds of the non-elderly, non-disabled poor live in a household where someone works.

  • Nearly four out of ten poor people are children.

  • More than one in ten of the poor are elderly.

  • As a result, less than half of the poor are working-age adults.

  • About 5 percent of the poor are too ill or disabled to work.

  • Of the working age adults who can work, 56 percent work at least part time and another 9 percent are unable to find work. Only about one-third are neither working nor looking for work.

MYTH 2: Most Poor People Collect Public Assistance

Again, the facts tell another story: fewer than half the people who were poor in 1984 lived in households where someone received cash income frompublic assistance.

Although virtually all the poor are eligible for Food Stamps, the majority of working poor do not participate in the program because of the perceived stigma, administrative obstacles, or other reasons. And there are no other national "welfare" programs for the working poor in two-parent families, for childless couples, or for single individuals. Only single-parent households (and, in about half the states, two-parent families with children and an unemployed parent) are eligible for AFDC, which is what most people have in mind when they talk about welfare.

MYTH 3: Most Poor People Are Members of Minority Groups

In fact, the typical poor person is not a member of a minority group:

  • Most poor people are white: 57 per-cent of the nation's poor are non-Hispanic whites; 27 percent are non-Hispanic blacks; and 12 percent are His-panic.

MYTH 4: The Typical Poor Family Is Headed by a Woman and Has Large Numbers of Children

Despite the strong correlation between poverty and female-headed families, the typical poor family does not meet this description.

  • More poor people live in families headed by married couples or by men than in families headed by women, nationally 43 percent vs. 35 percent (the rest are single individuals).

MYTH 5: The Typical Poor Person Lives in an Inner City Ghetto and Is Like the People Portrayed in Journalistic Accounts of Inner-City Poor Neighborhoods

The recent upsurge in media attention to the plight of the homeless and poor is certainly welcome. Unfortunately, the coverage has focused for the most part on the inner-city poor, perhaps because they are believed to be typical; it is misleading, however, to think of the typical poor person in this way.

  • About thirty percent of the poor live in rural areas. In comparison, 43 percent live in central cities.

  • In 1980, about 1.8 million poor people lived in the 100 largest central cities, in areas where the poverty rate was 40 percent or higher. These are the true 'ghettos,' and they contain only 6.7 percent of the nation's poor.

MYTH 6: Once Poor, Always Poor

The popular perception is that poverty and welfare dependence are permanent conditions. In fact, however, many families move into and out of poverty fairly regularly.

  • Between 1969 and 1978, almost one-third of the population lived in households that were poor for at least one year.

  • About half of those who were ever poor during this decade had incomes below the poverty level for only one or two years.

  • Only one in six of those who ever became poor during this decade (5.1 percent of the population) were poor for eight years or more.

Similar numbers are found for receipt of welfare. The poverty population observed at a given point in time will include a large proportion of people who are in the midst of a long-term spell of poverty. The apparent difference results from the fact that people with long spells that started eight years before, seven years before, six years before, and so on, are still poor. They "pile up" and seem to be a large part of the overall poverty population.

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