Unemployment vs. Poverty Rates in the USA
onthebottom said:
While you're correct on the definition of the measure I don't think it's quite as misleading as you think. It is a good measure over time........
OTB
Unemployment rates are indeed a misleading indicator in the USA.
A better indicator, 'over time', is the US Poverty rates which continue to get worse.
The Povery index is a bit harder to 'fudge the numbers' on when compared with unemployment rates.
Here's a good analysis of where 'bushienomics' is taking the USA......where only the 'well-to-do' prosper.
The poor still getting poorer
9/5/2006
By
E.J. DIONNE After a week of revisiting the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, the most depressing realization is how easily our leaders forgot their fervent promises to lift up our nation's poorest citizens.
All manner of politicians and columnists said in Katrina's wake that this was the time to revisit the problems of the destitute. The anguish of the people of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward would have at least some redemptive power if the country took poverty seriously again.
It didn't happen. The innovative ideas that came from all sides were swept off the table. The poor became unfashionable, once more. Congressional conservatives changed the conversation. A concern for the struggling gave way to debate over how to offset spending on Katrina with budget cuts - directed in large part at programs for the needy.
Perhaps the release of the Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage the same week as Katrina's first anniversary was a sign that God and the statisticians have a sense of humor. The report reinforces what we knew at the time of Katrina - that the poor are still with us, and that the middle class keeps losing ground.
The "good" news is that the poverty rate, the proportion of Americans who are poor, didn't change much between 2004 and 2005, falling in a statistically insignificant way from 12.7 percent to 12.6 percent. The bad news is that the poverty rate is still higher than it was in 2001, when it stood at 11.7 percent.
Worse is that the proportion of the poor who are very poor has risen. People are considered in deep poverty if they have half or less of the yearly income of those at the poverty line. In 2005, half the poverty line for a family of three was $7,788; for a family of four, it was $9,985. (Try living on that.) According to the new report, 43.1 percent of poor people deal with that sort of deep poverty - a record since 1975, when the government started keeping such statistics.
The number of Americans without health insurance rose, too, to 46.6 million in 2005, up from 45.3 million in 2004 and 41.2 million in 2001. The proportion without insurance is up from 14.6 percent in 2001 to 15.9 percent in 2005.
What about the middle class? Yes, the median income of American households rose by 1.1 percent last year after five years of decline. But most of the growth was in households headed by Americans 65 and over - who are helped, rightly, by substantial government benefits. Households headed by people under 65 saw their incomes fall yet again.
Want to know why so many men out there are mad? Adjusted for inflation, male earnings were lower in 2005 than they were back in 1973.
Women have been slowly closing the gender gap in income. Among full-time, year-round workers, women earn 77 percent of what men do now, compared with 57 percent in 1973. But in the most recent year, the gap closed because women lost income at a slightly slower rate than men. That's not how most women imagine achieving equality.
But the census had some very good news for the well-to-do. The top fifth of American households received 50.4 percent of all income last year, the highest proportion since the Census Bureau started following that trend in 1967. The biggest gains were concentrated in the top 5 percent.
"The economy is growing, and someone is getting the growth," said Sharon Parrott, a senior analyst at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "So now we know who it is."
President Bush and the Republican Congress, take a bow: You took power to make the well-off even better off, and you have succeeded brilliantly.
As for the poor and the middle class, maybe they'll do better after the next hurricane, or the one after that.
