Poverty in the USA (Earth, tradition, virtual, elder, America)

[Kowalski]

For sure, many people are saying the unfairness inherent in American Society has been woefully exposed by the Hurricane disaster. I think that that is true, not only is the gap between rich and poor growing in the USA, it is also growing in the UK, but read on fellows.

Number of Working Poor Families Growing in America
July 12th, 2005 by Dr. Amy K. Glasmeier
University Park, Pa. — Although the War on Poverty was declared in the 1960s, a poor family today in 2005 is much worse off than the average poor family in the 60s, because official poverty measures have failed to keep up with changing basic needs, according to a new report.

An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation Pulling Apart, 1960-2003 has just been published by a team of Penn State researchers. The project was funded by the Ford Foundation. An expanded version of the atlas, with updated and new sections, will be published by Routledge this fall.

“America has become a nation of people where all able persons who can work, do, but many can not make ends meet,” says Dr. Amy Glasmeier, lead author and the E. Willard Miller Professor of Economic Geography at Penn State. “America is not currently doing all it can to assist working families, those who are discriminated against in the labor market, and the disabled, to make ends meet.

“Current U.S. poverty rates may underestimate poverty among the working poor,” she adds. “Being poor in 1960 meant getting by on less than $3,553 for a family of four a year. Families were not expected to own a car or have a bed for each family member, and nothing was budgeted for medical care or insurance. ” Today, official guidelines still assume that families spend about one-third of their income on food, but food spending has dropped to one-sixth, with a larger share of expenses being taken up by housing, utilities and transportation. If health care and childcare expenses are included as necessities, the minimum level of income need by a family of four is much higher.

Over the last 30 years, the number of jobs that do not pay a living wage has increased dramatically. In the U.S., as many as 25 percent of all jobs pay less than a poverty-level income, the report says. In some states, as many as 30 percent do not pay a living wage. A living wage takes into account differences in the cost of living across areas of the U.S. In many communities, the national minimum wage of $5.15 per hour provides an income insufficient to support individuals or families, the report says. The research project’s web site provides a living wage calculator, which shows the amount of income needed to support individuals,and families of two and four persons. The tool illustrates the types of jobs that do and do not pay living wages for communities around the country http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/.

“Of the more than 35 million persons classified as living in poverty, most are children, disabled or elderly,” Glasmeier notes. “But 7 million of them are men and women who are working at jobs that do not pay a wage they can live on. A majority of working poor are over age 24 and in their wage-earning period of life.”

The working poor are found in every state, according to the report. In 17 states, the majority of working poor totals more than 50 percent of the working age population. Such states are concentrated in the Farm Belt, where economic decline has been ongoing for the last 20 years, and in the West, where population growth has helped keep wages low, say the researchers.

“Working poor families with children are even more concentrated in the South, Southwest and the western Plain states,” Glasmeier says.

The Atlas maps the effect of poverty by regions (Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, Native American nations, and the Border region); and by specific populations (children, women, elderly, Black families) through charts, maps and tables. It also outlines the history of poverty and American poverty policy from the 1930s to 2004.

“Certainly, progress has been made over the intervening 40 years in terms of an overall minimum standard of living as measured by material conditions,” the researchers write. “In the last 40 years, the largest positive change occurred for the poor elderly. In 1959, 35.2 percent lived below the poverty line; today, it is 10 percent. A ombination of programs i.e. Social Security and Medicare has been one of the main reasons. Still, more than 40 percent of elderly persons live on incomes only twice the national poverty level, which is approximately $18,000 a year.”

Looming trade deficits, growing disparity in the availability of good jobs, reduced returns to investments in education, and the loss of labor-intensive manufacturing jobs in America’s low-wage region raise serious questions. Individuals and families at greatest risk for poverty today are men with less than a college education, people of color (especially Blacks and Hispanics), working families and families headed by women, and a significant number of the nation’s elderly who live at or close to the poverty line, the report says. “The problem of persistent poverty is a complex one that includes communities and individuals, who through no fault of their own, find themselves unable to make ends meet in this globalizing,
information-intensive world,” the researchers say. “We are a more diverse population and a more dispersed population. If anything, the gap between the economically secure and the poor is more severe than it was four decades ago. In many families today, children cannot say they expect to be better off than their parents. This is perhaps the greatest challenge now facing our society.”

An abbreviated version of Atlas of Poverty is available by contacting:

Debra Lambert
Earth and Environmental Systems Institute
2217 Earth & Engineering Science Bldg.
University Park, PA 16802

Phone: 814-863-7091

EDITORS: Dr. Glasmeier is at 814-865-7323 or akg1@ems.psu.edu by email.

Cambridge Conference Invitation
July 8th, 2005 by Dr. Amy K. Glasmeier
Poverty and Place in the US-UK: Comparisons of Experiences and Policy with a Look Toward the Future, September 15–16, 2005, Cambridge, UK

Organizers: Cambridge-MIT Institute’s Competitiveness Forum and supported by [Cambridge University; Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, UK; The Carsey Institute University of New Hampshire, and The Social Science Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University]

Background: Starting in the 1980s, it was increasingly recognized that macro economic growth alone would not reduce the poverty population. Labor market policies, social welfare programs, and certain levels of income subsidy were presumed to be short-term requirements to lift people and places out of economic decline. A sustained period of economic growth in the 1990s did little to counter this belief as poverty rates in the UK and the US increased and the number of persons working but poor in the US grew significantly. With increasing technological change and mobility of capital and employment, what tools are available to combat growing disparities among members of society and among each nation’s communities? To begin to grapple with this and related questions, this conference seeks to uncover evidence about how some of these larger changes influence policy options aimed at addressing place- and people-based poverty and ascertain the potential scope of sharing research and policy experience between the UK and the US.

Conference Format: The conference will be an extended workshop in which participants will have an opportunity to engage in intensive debate and reflection. The conference time will be segmented with slots devoted to seven major thematic issues affecting both UK and US society. It will begin with short concise overview papers about the geographical concentration and sociodemographic composition of poverty in the UK and the US. Subsequent thematic sections will begin with short contributions from experts on current developments in labor markets, the nature of work, the impact of new technology on the location of work and residence, the challenge of meeting basic human needs in the areas of housing and education, the declining role of the state in the provision of certain basic goods, and the changing nature and quality of consumption and their possible impact on the perpetuation of geographic concentrations of poverty.

Graduate Students: 10 paid slots for graduate students. $150 pounds sterling will be provided to cover in-country UK travel costs. Please send a letter of inquiry to Amy Glasmeier and a list of three references.

Contact: Michael Kitson mk24@cam.ac.uk, Cambridge, Judge Institute, Amy Glasmeier akg1@ems.psu.edu, Penn State, or Peter Tyler pt23@hermes.cam.ac.uk, Cambridge.


Kowalski
__________________
Now take it away Amigo, heey, get it ! Allright ! Uh huh ! taking me on home

[Ardent Listener]

When so many people could not afford a bus ticket out of the path of a hurrican, something is wrong with the picture.

[Jaiket]

Poverty in the USA? You mean markets don't look after everyone?

[Kowalski]

Exactly, it's the same here; in real terms, poverty stricken people are poorer than ever. The Rich are getting richer and wealth distribution remains cruelly unfair. Our political masters are puppets of the Super Rich and Big buisness interests. They don't care much about the people, unless they are touting for votes. Power to People.

K

[Kowalski]

Anybody on here in the Super Rich class? Like to here from their side of the great divide .

K

[michel]

Originally Posted by Kowalski

Exactly, it's the same here; in real terms, poverty stricken people are poorer than ever. The Rich are getting richer and wealth distribution remains cruelly unfair. Our political masters are puppets of the Super Rich and Big buisness interests. They don't care much about the people, unless they are touting for votes. Power to People.

K

Do you know,there is a different side to this argument (there always are, of course). My wife and i managed on 1 low salary (Mine) while she brought up our children (her chice as well as mine).

We scrimped and saved; hardly ever went out, cut out smoking - my wife would go round every supermarket looking for reduced goods.

When she started taking our eldest to baby classes, there was another woman, who was 'poor' - the state paid for her taxi to and from the nursery; she smoked like a chimney - and we knew where she lived; her husband had a nice car (we had an old wreck)....

like I said, there are always two sides to every story.

[Kowalski]

Originally Posted by michel

Do you know,there is a different side to this argument (there always are, of course). My wife and i managed on 1 low salary (Mine) while she brought up our children (her chice as well as mine).

We scrimped and saved; hardly ever went out, cut out smoking - my wife would go round every supermarket looking for reduced goods.

When she started taking our eldest to baby classes, there was another woman, who was 'poor' - the state paid for her taxi to and from the nursery; she smoked like a chimney - and we knew where she lived; her husband had a nice car (we had an old wreck)....

like I said, there are always two sides to every story.

Well you know Michel, some are better able to exploit the system than others. Generally though, I am rather concerned about the Poverty Issue, and the benefits trap. Around here, for instance, virtually all engineering is extinct. SO most of the traditional jobs have disappeared. Low paid jobs rule the roost now, and although I understand that drive and ambition can take you far, what tends to happen to those less well off is being caught in cycle of apathy and hoplessness.

Cheers

K

[Ori]

It's pretty bad here at the moment too, many companies are moving to other countries for cheaper labour, and anyone who is well educated and qualified with specific skills are moving away too.

It makes you worry more for the next generation when 80% of the working class cannot make ends meet.

[jamaesi]

Poverty in the USA? You mean markets don't look after everyone?

I know for sure that big corporations are looking after me!

Anybody on here in the Super Rich class? Like to here from their side of the great divide .

Yes, of Brasil.

The superrich here just have to make as much as the middle class of America- the middle class that is fast disappearing.




It´s sad when about one-sixth of the world´s population lives in a slum-like condition.
The favelas here are terrible.

[Kowalski]

Well guys, from all research I've read lately, it seems to me that the divide between rich and poor is in fact worse now than it was in the Sixties, when the a war on Poverty was first muted. If it is a war, it's a war that the West is losing. Ignoring Gov spin, things are getting steadily worse, we hardly make any damm thing in the Uk anymore, we have more and more call centers, but as O commented, even these are been hived of to India en mass. The Gov payed out a fortune in subsidies to bring in foreign companies, up here, most of them have packed up and left.

K