8.5.2: Who Are the Poor?

 8.5: Poverty.2: Sociological Models of Social Class PT 253 8.5.2: Who Are the Poor? To better understand American society, it is important to understand poverty. Let’s start by exploring a myth. Breaking a Myth A common idea is that most of the poor in the United States are African Americans who crowd the welfare rolls. Look at Figure 8.10. You can see that there are more poor white Americans than poor Americans of any other racial–ethnic group. The reason is that there are so many more white Americans than those of any other racial–ethnic group. With this in mind, let’s turn to the geography of poverty, how the poor are distributed in the country. Figure 8.10 An Overview of Poverty in the United States The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A pie chart presents the share of various groups among the U.S. poor: African Americans: 21 percent, White Americans: 43 percent, Asian Americans: 5 percent, Latinos: 26 percent, and two or more races: 0.4. The Geography of Poverty From the following Social Map, you can see how poverty varies by region. The striking clustering of poverty in the South has prevailed for more than 150 years. Figure 8.11 Patterns of Poverty Loading... Source: Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2017:Table 734. The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A U.S. state map presents the pattern of poverty in different states of the United States, with the data "Lowest poverty: New Hampshire (7.3 percent); Hawaii (9.3); Maryland (9.7 percent)  and "Highest Poverty: Mississippi (20.8 percent); Louisiana (20.2 percent); New Mexico (19.8 percent)."The data for percentage of the population in poverty in different states of the U.S. is categorized under the following three categories as follows:States with the least poverty: 7.3 to 11.4 percentNew Hampshire (7.3)Hawaii(9.3)Maryland (9.7)Connecticut (9.8)Alaska (9.9)Minnesota (9.9)Utah (10.2)Massachusetts (10.4)New Jersey (10.4)North Dakota (10.7)Colorado (11)Virginia (11)Washington (11.3)Wyoming (11.3)Nebraska (11.4)Average poverty (11.7 to 14.4)Delaware (11.7)Iowa (11.8)Wisconsin (11.8)Vermont (11.9)Kansas(12.1)Maine(12.5)Rhode Island (12.8)Pennsylvania (12.9)Illinois(13)Montana (13.3)Oregon (13.3)South Dakota(13.3)Nevada (13.8)Missouri (14)Indiana (14.1)California (14.3)Idaho (14.4)(Highest poverty 14.6 to 20.8)Ohio (14.6)Florida(14.7)New York (14.7)Michigan (15)South Carolina (15.3)North Carolina (15.4)Texas (15.6)Tennessee (15.8)Georgia (16)Oklahoma (16.3)Arizona (16.4)Alabama (17.1)Arkansas (17.2)West Virginia (17.9)Kentucky (18.5)District of Columbia (18.6)New Mexico (19.8)Louisiana (20.2)Mississippi (20.8) A second pattern of geography, rural poverty, also goes back a couple of centuries. At 16 percent, rural poverty is higher than the national average of 15 percent. Helping to maintain this higher rate are the lower education of the rural poor and the scarcity of rural jobs. The third aspect of poverty and geography, the suburbanization of poverty, is new. With the extensive migration from cities to suburbs, more of the nation’s poor now live in the suburbs than in the cities (Allard 2019). This major change is not likely to be temporary. 254 In addition to geography, U.S. poverty follows lines of education, family structure, race–ethnicity, and age. Let’s turn to these major patterns. Poverty comes in many forms. Families who go into debt to buy possessions squeak by month after month until a crisis turns their lives upside down. I took this photo of a family in Georgia, parked alongside a highway selling their possessions to survive our economic downturn. Credit: James M. Henslin Hearing from the Author: Poverty Listen to the Audio Listen to the Audio Education You are already aware that education is a vital aspect of poverty, but you may not know just how powerful it is. Look at Figure 8.12. One of every 5 people who drop out of high school is poor, but only 1 of 20 people who finish college end up in poverty. As you can see, the chances that someone will be poor become less with each higher level of education. Although this principle applies regardless of race–ethnicity, you can also see how race–ethnicity makes an impact at every level of education. Figure 8.12 Who Ends Up Poor? Poverty by Education and Race–Ethnicity Loading... The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A multiple bar graph presents rate of poverty based on education and race-ethnicity.The vertical axis of the graph represents “Percentage in Poverty” ranging from 0 to 40 percent in increments of 5 percent while the horizontal axis represents different race groups. The data presented in the graph is as follows:• All Racial–Ethnic Groupso College graduate: 5o College dropout: 11o High school graduate: 14o High school dropout: 24• White Americanso College graduate: 4o College dropout: 9o High school graduate: 10o High school dropout: 17• Asian Americanso College graduate: 8o College dropout: 13o High school graduate: 13o High school dropout: 20• Latinoso College graduate: 8o College dropout: 13o High school graduate: 17o High school dropout: 27• African Americanso College graduate: 8o College dropout: 17o High school graduate: 25o High school dropout: 36. Family Structure: The Feminization of Poverty Family structure is one of the best indicators of whether or not a family is poor. From Figure 8.13, you can see that the families least likely to be poor are headed by both a mother and father, while those the most likely to be poor are headed by only a mother. The reason for this can be summed up in one statistic: Women average only 74 percent of what men earn. (We’ll review this statistic in detail in the next chapter.) With our high rate of divorce combined with the large number of births to single women, mother-headed families have become more common. Sociologists call this association of poverty with women the feminization of poverty. Figure 8.13 Poverty and Family Structure Loading... The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A bar graph presents relationship between percentage of poverty and head of the family.The text above the graph reads "Who heads the family?" The vertical axis ranges from 0 to 35 percent in increments of 5 percent. The data presented in the graph indicating percentage of poverty when headed by different members of the family is as follows:A married couple: 5.1 percentA man: 13.1 percentA woman: 26.6 percent Race–Ethnicity One of the strongest factors in poverty is race–ethnicity, as you can see in Figure 8.14. Overall, 10 percent of Asian Americans are poor, followed closely by whites at 11 percent. From there, the poverty rate jumps, with 19 percent of Latinos and 22 percent of African Americans living in poverty. Figure 8.14 Poverty and Race–Ethnicity Loading... The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A bar graph presents relationship between percentage of poverty in American based on race-ethnicity.The text above the graph reads,  Americans is poverty.  The vertical axis of the graph ranges from 0 to 30 percent in increments of 5 percent. The data presented in the graph is as follows:National average: 13 percent.White Americans: 11 percent.Asian Americans: 10 percent.Latinos: 19 percent.African Americans: 22 percent. 255 Because whites are, by far, the largest group in the United States, their lower rate of poverty translates into larger numbers. As a result, there are many more poor whites than poor people of any other racial–ethnic group. As you saw in Figure 8.10, 43 percent of all poor people are whites. Age and Poverty Figure 8.15 shows one of the most significant aspects of poverty in the United States. There are several things you should learn from this figure. First, note that the elderly are less likely than the general population to be poor. This is quite a change. It used to be that growing old increased people’s chances of being poor. Elderly poverty was so common that there was a lot of publicity—television programs and newspaper and magazine articles accompanied by photos of “pitiful, suffering old folks.” Then government policies to redistribute income—Social Security and subsidized housing, food stamps, and medical care—slashed the rate of poverty among the elderly. Figure 8.15 Poverty, Age, and Race–Ethnicity Loading... The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A bar chart presents percentage of poverty of different races based on the category of age.The text above the graph reads,  What percentage of these groups is poor?  The vertical axis of the graph ranges from 0 to 40 percent in increments of 5 percent. The data presented in the graph is as follows:The elderly age 65 and overo All racial ethnic groups: 9 percent.o White Americans: 8 percent.o Asian Americans: 12 percent.o Latinos: 17 percent.o African Americans: 19 percent.Children under age 18o All racial ethnic groups: 18 percent.o White Americans: 16 percent.o Asian Americans: 11 percent.o Latinos: 27 percent.o African Americans: 31 percent. Figure 8.15 also shows how the prevailing racial–ethnic patterns carry over into old age. You can see how much more likely elderly minorities are to be poor than elderly whites. In the next section, we will focus on a third aspect of Figure 8.15, how common poverty is among children.