37.9 million.
That's the number of Americans currently living
in poverty, accounting for 11.6% of the total
population. That's despite the fact that America ranks
first as the richest nation in the world in terms of
GDP.
The United States is known for having this great
abundance, and at the same time, alongside that
abundance, there is widespread poverty and
economic insecurity.
Sometimes you question, you know, we're in the United
States of America, how can the citizens be going
through such an issue?
We always boast that we're superpower, that we are the
richest in the world and things just don't make
sense.
Poverty in the US had been steadily improving over the
past decade. From a height of 48.8 million people
living in poverty in 2013 to 34 million in
2019. That was until the pandemic changed its course.
COVID absolutely had a very deep impact on the access
to employment and long-term employment for a
number of families that were already vulnerable for
various reasons.
Prior, it was myself and my two older brothers, along
with my stepdad, that constantly worked to provide
for everyone in the house.
But after COVID 19 and the whole lockdown, we were laid
off. And ever since then, we have had issues finding a
job.
Poverty is expensive.
About 11% of the federal budget or $665 billion
goes to economic security programs.
Child poverty alone is estimated to cost the US
over $1 trillion based on the latest research from
2018.
There are also really high costs on an individual level
. Poverty leads to more anxiety.
It leads to more stress.
It leads to more health problems, all kinds of
things that amplify the effect of poverty.
The feelings that you would usually encounter when
you're in this position is mostly depression.
Why can't I find a job?
Why are we in this situation? You know, we're
trying our best and sometimes it's just falling
back down on our face.
So how did poverty become such a big issue in the
United States and why is it so difficult to end it?
Income inequality is one of the big reasons why the US
suffers from such high rates of poverty.
The income for the top 10% was more than 13 times
higher than income at the bottom 10%, according to the
US Census.
We unfortunately in the United States are at the
very high end in terms of income inequality.
And so what happens is when the distance gets further
and further away, the rungs on the ladder get further
away and it's harder for people to climb those rungs
out of poverty into the middle and to the upper
class.
The pandemic has made inequality worse.
The Gini index, which measures the nation's income
inequality, rose for the first time in a decade by
1.2% in 2021.
The reason the pandemic has made that worse is because
when you talk to large organizations, corporations,
what they saw was that staff was leaving, but they
had a response to that, right?
Their response was, let's give bonuses.
Let's give raises.
Many organizations, many small businesses,
government, they don't have that luxury.
So inflation has kept up with the money that most
people in the 1% have made.
But it has deepened and widened the gap between
those that have money and those that do not.
Research by MIT estimates that the living wage in the
United States is $24.16 per hour for a family of
four. But the federal minimum wage is set at $7.25
per hour. This means that a typical family of four needs
to work more than two full-time minimum wage jobs
to earn a living wage, and single-parent families need
to work significantly harder.
We worked at a banquet hall.
Any sort of party, we would set it up, come early, set
the tables, dishes, plates, silverware, everything, you
name it. We worked for $15 an hour.
It was really bad.
I would say we were really overworked.
13-hour shifts sometimes.
We were really frustrated with where we were, but at
the same time, it was like, what do we do if we
leave? You know, we were at that stage of like, yeah, we
hate this job, but we have to keep it to continue
going.
Problems with wages are especially worse for workers
of certain races.
If we're looking at the broader population of people
who are poor or low income, meaning one emergency away
from being poor, we're talking about approximately
140 million people.
Out of the 140 million, well over 70 million people, well
over half of that population are people of
color.
The US also suffers from a lack of social safety nets
that protect Americans from poverty.
If you look at, for example, the amount of cash that
people might get if they're
low-income, it's very, very minimal.
Right now we receive welfare and it's roughly around
$250 for my household of seven and it actually has
helped us a lot.
Sometimes the numbers really don't make sense
because how can a large family just live off a
couple hundred dollars, especially now in this day
and age where you go to the grocery store, you spend
and a few items are $100.
Most countries, for example, European countries, have
what's known as a child allowance, where if you have
a child, you get a certain amount of monthly income to
help raise that child.
That's pretty common.
But in the United States, we don't have anything like
that. And in the United States, we don't have
universal benefits, for example, health care or
child care.
It's also a system that many times is
pervasive in actually creating poverty situations.
So I'll give you an example. If I'm eligible for
Medicaid today and I'm also eligible for cash assistance
and I'm also eligible for SNAP, if I get a job that
provides me even a little bit closer out of poverty, I
lose all those benefits immediately, which means
that I'm incentivized if I need health care for my
children and I have a job that's not going to provide
it right away to not look for employment that is going
to pay me an amount that's going to make me ineligible
for certain benefits, right?
So while people are working really hard for upward
mobility, the systems that we have in place don't give
them the grace to be able to come out of poverty and
provide their own agency to actually create the
opportunity for upward mobility.
The official poverty measure in the US today is based on
calculations from the mid-1960s.
It's calculated by comparing pretax income
against a threshold set at three times the cost of
minimum diet In 1963.
A large number of federal programs still rely on this
measure to figure out who is eligible for assistance
and welfare.
The researcher, whose work became the basis of that
measure, never intended it to be used in the way that
it currently is, both as a widespread measure of
poverty, but then as the basis of all of these
different social welfare programs and allocations of
resources towards those programs.
It doesn't take certain very obvious indicators into
consideration. To start, it looks at pre-tax income,
which is not what I'm taking home every day so
that doesn't make sense. It also doesn't look at
different family compositions, which
absolutely impacts how a family may spend money.
If I am the type of family that has both of my parents
living with me, I'm going to spend more.
It doesn't look at expenses around food or child care.
So in many ways, it's incredibly out of date
because it has not kept up with the way life has
changed for most Americans.
As a response to these criticisms, the supplemental
poverty measure was developed in 2011 as an
improvement over the existing measure.
It incorporates into the measurement both the cost of
basic needs like food, clothing, utilities, but
also government transfers and programs.
So you could see the effect of government programs in
addressing poverty and economic insecurity.
It also takes into account geographical differences.
So the supplemental poverty threshold is more of a range
depending on where you live, your household size
and what your housing status is.
So it is more comprehensive .
In that way, it's an improvement on the official
poverty measure.
But some experts argue that even the supplemental
poverty measure isn't a perfect method.
While it looked to close the gap on certain indicators
that the original poverty measure was not taking into
consideration, it did not go far enough.
Food is one of those places where we are still not
taking into account what food may cause in a state
like New York versus a state like Mississippi.
So if you have a universal brush for the whole country,
you're going to miss a number of people that are
either at risk of falling into poverty or are already
technically living in poverty but are not counted
by the measure.
The Census Bureau told CNBC that both the official
poverty measure and the supplemental poverty measure
provide a consistent data of poverty measurement and
that the Bureau continually strives to innovate and
improve the design and measurement of their
well-being statistics.
This difficulty in measuring poverty has also
led some experts to argue that poverty isn't as
serious of an issue as it's made to believe.
Poverty in the United States and the way it's normally
understood is not a big issue at all.
It's deliberately miscounted.
So the reality is that we have poverty in the United
States because the Census Bureau ignores the entire
welfare state when it goes to count poverty.
You count poverty by saying, well, a household
has an income, say less than $26,000 a year, but all
the welfare benefits or 95% of the welfare benefits are
not counted, and they also undercount earnings by about
50%. Therefore, you have a lot of poverty basically
because most of the resources that these folks
have are not counted.
Unless we can get an accurate number of just how
prevalent poverty is in the United States, attempting to
eradicate it is close to impossible.
When we don't have those numbers. A lot of folks who
are making policy decisions are flying blind.
Whether I'm a large corporation that is looking
to invest in an organization or in a city,
or whether I am a public official that is trying to
figure out how much SNAP is enough SNAP.
If I don't have a baseline, there's no way I'm ever
going to be solving the problem.
If COVID has proven anything.
Poverty is an issue that can be resolved with the
right policy.
Government assistance led to a significant decline in
the supplemental poverty measure, lifting 45.4
million Americans out of poverty during the height of
the pandemic.
Policy, I would say, is one of our strongest tools in
fully addressing and eradicating poverty.
It is where we can define what the problems are,
accurately measure what the problems are, and then
design and implement the programs we need to address
the true extent of poverty.
A really good example that I'll use is that of the
elderly. This is the one real success story in the
United States as we've really been able to reduce
the poverty rates amongst the elderly as a result of
primarily social security and Medicare.
So if we didn't have those programs today, poverty
rates for the elderly would go from about 10% to 40%.
And that shows you the dramatic impact that
government programs and policies can have on
reducing poverty.
Figuring out a more accurate method of measuring poverty
is a vital step in eradicating the issue.
I would begin with changing how we define and measure
poverty to include the full extent of economic
insecurity.
Another way of measuring poverty, and this is a way
that European countries and other countries use is
what's known as a relative measure.
And so they say if you fall below 50% of median income,
then we're going to count you in poverty.
So if the median income was $70,000 and you fell below
$35,000, you'd be counted as being in poverty.
More targeted social programs could also have a
significant impact on the impoverished community.
Some of those programs may include an expanded child
tax credit, the kind of which we saw in 2021 when it
was expanded during the pandemic, raising the
minimum wage immediately to at least $15 an hour, but
then moving towards a living wage and guaranteeing
that everybody who wants to work can work as a
guaranteed ability and access to a good paying job.
I think a really straightforward solution
that people have been talking about more recently
is the idea of a universal basic income.
So here the idea is that if poverty is a lack of income,
then a very straightforward way is to transfer some
income. Here's the analogy I would use to get people to
shift their way of thinking, and it's the
analogy of musical chairs.
Let's say we have ten people playing and eight
chairs available.
Now, who's going to win and lose at that game?
Well, if we focus on the individual level factors,
people that were in a bad position when the music
stopped and so on.
But if we focus on the structure of the game, then
two people are going to lose out regardless of the
individual attributes.
And that's what's going on here in the United States.
We're focusing on, people aren't working hard enough.
They're not doing this. They're not doing that.
When really the problem is that there aren't enough
chairs in the game.