In preparing a post expanding on some of the points I made in my earlier post on income inequality, I realized how difficult it was to discuss the subject without thinking about who are actually poor. Based on information from the Census Bureau, particularly Table 3, I think the poor can actually be summarized fairly simply:
- non-native born Hispanics and their children
- urban blacks
- people who live in rural areas and small towns regardless of race or national origin
Any summary is bound to over-simplify. According to the Census Bureau roughly 45 million people are poor. There are other ways of summarizing who those people actually are, e.g. by age or household structure, than the one I’ve presented and if you think you have a summary that’s a better representation of the reality of poverty in the United States, I’m open to it.
Wrong? Too simple? Right? What?
I’ve always thought the poor were those defined by dependence on transfer payments, the working/middle class was defined by wage income, and the rich by revenue derived from capital. Its not exact — for example, a professional sports star may be (temporarily) defined by wage income, but ideally the professional is investing towards an early retirement.
I don’t really care about income equality. For the poor, we need fewer people dependent on the government. For the middle class, we need wages that would make it possible to one day own property and have investments. For the rich, I don’t really care, other than higher estate taxes.
This was a fairly big story the other day, posted by the AP, dealing with more whites struggling with poverty.
The poor also include the young and the old. (I would exclude college students, but you still see a lot of poor amongst children.)
Steve
steve:
Yes for the young, no for the old. As the table to which I linked shows, young people are more likely to be poor than the average American while old people are less likely to be poor than the average American.
That’s why I didn’t list age in my simple model. I don’t believe the deciding factor is age but national origin, race, and urban/rural residence.