research paper on poverty in america

Poverty in America: Is Welfare the Answer or the Problem?

This paper reviews the current policies for fighting poverty and explores the impact they have had. We begin by reviewing trends in poverty, poverty spending and economic performance. It is immediately apparent that economic performance is the dominant determinant of the measured poverty rate over the past two decades. Government assistance programs expanded greatly over this period, but the growth in cash assistance was too modest to have major effects, and the large growth in in-kind benefits could not reduce measured poverty since such benefits are not counted as income. Next we focus on three groups: the disabled, female family heads, and unemployed black youth. We find little evidence that government deserves the blame for the problems of each group, and suggest that the broad outlines of current policies are defensible on economic grounds.

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Ellwood, David T. and Lawrence H. Summers. "Poverty in America: Is Welfare the Answer or the Problem?" in Fighting Poverty: What Works and What Doesn't, eds. S.Bazinger and D. Wienberg, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986, pp. 78-105

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Who’s poor in America? 50 years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a data portrait

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson used his first State of the Union address to urge “all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States.” The War on Poverty, as the set of social programs enacted in 1964-1965 came to  be called, was arguably the most ambitious domestic policy initiative since the Great Depression. But for decades, politicians and social scientists have argued about whether Johnson’s antipoverty programs have lifted people out of destitution, trapped them in cycles of dependency, or both.

Critics note that the official poverty rate, as calculated by the Census Bureau , has fallen only modestly, from 19% in 1964 to 15% in 2012 (the most recent year available). But other analysts, citing shortcomings in the official poverty measure, focus on a supplemental measure (also produced by the Census Bureau) to argue that more progress has been made. A team of researchers from Columbia University , for example, calculated an “anchored” supplemental measure — essentially the 2012 measure carried back through time and adjusted for historical inflation — and found that it fell from about 26% in 1967 to 16% in 2012.

What’s inarguable, though, is that the demographics of America’s poor have shifted over the decades. Here’s a look at what has, and hasn’t, changed, based on the official measure. (Note: The reference years vary depending on data availability.) 

Today, most poor Americans are in their prime working years:  In 2012, 57% of poor Americans were ages 18 to 64, versus 41.7% in 1959.

Far fewer elderly are poor:  In 1966, 28.5% of Americans ages 65 and over were poor; by 2012 just 9.1% were. There were 1.2 million fewer elderly poor in 2012 than in 1966, despite the doubling of the total elderly population.  Researchers generally credit this steep drop to Social Security, particularly the expansion and inflation-indexing of benefits during the 1970s.

But childhood poverty persists:  Poverty among children younger than 18 began dropping even before the War on Poverty. From 27.3% in 1959, childhood poverty fell to 23% in 1964 and to 14% by 1969. Since then, however, the childhood poverty rate has risen, fallen and, since the 2007-08 financial crisis, risen again.

Today’s poor families are structured differently:  In 1973, the first year for which data are available, more than half (51.4%) of poor families were headed by a married couple; 45.4% were headed by women. In 2012, just over half (50.3%) of poor families were female-headed, while 38.9% were headed by married couples.

Poverty is more evenly distributed, though still heaviest in the South: In 1969, 45.9% of poor Americans lived in the South, a region that accounted for 31% of the U.S. population at the time. At 17.9%, the South’s poverty rate was far above other regions. In 2012, the South was home to 37.3% of all Americans and 41.1% of the nation’s poor people; though the South’s poverty rate, 16.5%, was the highest among the four Census-designated regions, it was only 3.2 percentage points above the lowest (the Midwest).

Poverty among blacks has fallen sharply:  In 1966, two years after Johnson’s speech, four-in-ten (41.8%) of African-Americans were poor; blacks constituted nearly a third (31.1%) of all poor Americans. By 2012, poverty among African-Americans had fallen to 27.2% — still more than double the rate among whites (12.7%, 1.4 percentage points higher than in 1966).

But poverty has risen among Hispanics.  Poverty data for Hispanics, who can be of any race, wasn’t collected until 1972. That year, 22.8% lived below the poverty threshold. In 2012, the share of Hispanics in poverty had risen to 25.6%. But the U.S. Hispanic population has quintupled over that time. As a result, more than half of the 22 million-person increase in official poverty between 1972 and 2012 was among Hispanics.

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Income inequality is greater among Chinese Americans than any other Asian origin group in the U.S.

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Poverty in America: Trends and Explanations Hilary Hoynes, Marianne Page, and Ann Huff Stevens (Affiliates in Economics)

Over the past 45 years, the United States has experienced a rising standard of living, with real GDP per capita more than doubling between 1959 and 2004. In contrast, living standards among some groups seem to have stagnated. Although a number of studies have documented a correlation between macroeconomic conditions and poverty, the relationship is not as simple, or as strong, as one might think. What additional factors can explain the starkly different trends in economic well-being that are measured by overall GDP growth and the poverty rate?

Other factors may better explain why the poverty rate has failed to fall. Rising numbers of female headed families may offset income gains from women’s increasing labor force participation. Increasing income inequality—in particular stemming from declines in wages for less-skilled workers—may have limited the poverty fighting effects of economic growth. Finally, the level of and changes in government benefits directed toward the nonelderly may explain why the nonelderly poverty rate has not moved in the same direction as elderly poverty.

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Marianne Page Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Center for Poverty & Inequality

Mental health effects of poverty, hunger, and homelessness on children and teens

Rising inflation and an uncertain economy are deeply affecting the lives of millions of Americans, particularly those living in low-income communities. It may seem impossible for a family of four to survive on just over $27,000 per year or a single person on just over $15,000, but that’s what millions of people do everyday in the United States. Approximately 37.9 million Americans, or just under 12%, now live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau .

Additional data from the Bureau show that children are more likely to experience poverty than people over the age of 18. Approximately one in six kids, 16% of all children, live in families with incomes below the official poverty line.

Those who are poor face challenges beyond a lack of resources. They also experience mental and physical issues at a much higher rate than those living above the poverty line. Read on for a summary of the myriad effects of poverty, homelessness, and hunger on children and youth. And for more information on APA’s work on issues surrounding socioeconomic status, please see the Office of Socioeconomic Status .

Who is most affected?

Poverty rates are disproportionately higher among most non-White populations. Compared to 8.2% of White Americans living in poverty, 26.8% of American Indian and Alaska Natives, 19.5% of Blacks, 17% of Hispanics and 8.1% of Asians are currently living in poverty.

Similarly, Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous children are overrepresented among children living below the poverty line. More specifically, 35.5% of Black people living in poverty in the U.S. are below the age of 18. In addition, 40.7% of Hispanic people living below the poverty line in the U.S. are younger than age 18, and 29.1% of American Indian and Native American children lived in poverty in 2018. In contrast, approximately 21% of White people living in poverty in the U.S. are less than 18 years old.

Furthermore, families with a female head of household are more than twice as likely to live in poverty compared to families with a male head of household. Twenty-three percent of female-headed households live in poverty compared to 11.4% of male-headed households, according to the U.S. Census Bureau .

What are the effects of poverty on children and teens?

The impact of poverty on young children is significant and long lasting. Poverty is associated with substandard housing, hunger, homelessness, inadequate childcare, unsafe neighborhoods, and under-resourced schools. In addition, low-income children are at greater risk than higher-income children for a range of cognitive, emotional, and health-related problems, including detrimental effects on executive functioning, below average academic achievement, poor social emotional functioning, developmental delays, behavioral problems, asthma, inadequate nutrition, low birth weight, and higher rates of pneumonia.

Psychological research also shows that living in poverty is associated with differences in structural and functional brain development in children and adolescents in areas related to cognitive processes that are critical for learning, communication, and academic achievement, including social emotional processing, memory, language, and executive functioning.

Children and families living in poverty often attend under-resourced, overcrowded schools that lack educational opportunities, books, supplies, and appropriate technology due to local funding policies. In addition, families living below the poverty line often live in school districts without adequate equal learning experiences for both gifted and special needs students with learning differences and where high school dropout rates are high .

What are the effects of hunger on children and teens?

One in eight U.S. households with children, approximately 12.5%, could not buy enough food for their families in 2021 , considerably higher than the rate for households without children (9.4%). Black (19.8%) and Latinx (16.25%) households are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity, with food insecurity rates in 2021 triple and double the rate of White households (7%), respectively.

Research has found that hunger and undernutrition can have a host of negative effects on child development. For example, maternal undernutrition during pregnancy increases the risk of negative birth outcomes, including premature birth, low birth weight, smaller head size, and lower brain weight. In addition, children experiencing hunger are at least twice as likely to report being in fair or poor health and at least 1.4 times more likely to have asthma, compared to food-secure children.

The first three years of a child’s life are a period of rapid brain development. Too little energy, protein and nutrients during this sensitive period can lead to lasting deficits in cognitive, social and emotional development . School-age children who experience severe hunger are at increased risk for poor mental health and lower academic performance , and often lag behind their peers in social and emotional skills .

What are the effects of homelessness on children and teens?

Approximately 1.2 million public school students experienced homelessness during the 2019-2020 school year, according to the National Center for Homeless Education (PDF, 1.4MB) . The report also found that students of color experienced homelessness at higher proportions than expected based on the overall number of students. Hispanic and Latino students accounted for 28% of the overall student body but 38% of students experiencing homelessness, while Black students accounted for 15% of the overall student body but 27% of students experiencing homelessness. While White students accounted for 46% of all students enrolled in public schools, they represented 26% of students experiencing homelessness.

Homelessness can have a tremendous impact on children, from their education, physical and mental health, sense of safety, and overall development. Children experiencing homelessness frequently need to worry about where they will live, their pets, their belongings, and other family members. In addition, homeless children are less likely to have adequate access to medical and dental care, and may be affected by a variety of health challenges due to inadequate nutrition and access to food, education interruptions, trauma, and disruption in family dynamics.

In terms of academic achievement, students experiencing homelessness are more than twice as likely to be chronically absent than non-homeless students , with greater rates among Black and Native American or Alaska Native students. They are also more likely to change schools multiple times and to be suspended—especially students of color.

Further, research shows that students reporting homelessness have higher rates of victimization, including increased odds of being sexually and physically victimized, and bullied. Student homelessness correlates with other problems, even when controlling for other risks. They experienced significantly greater odds of suicidality, substance abuse, alcohol abuse, risky sexual behavior, and poor grades in school.

What can you do to help children and families experiencing poverty, hunger, and homelessness?

There are many ways that you can help fight poverty in America. You can:

• Volunteer your time with charities and organizations that provide assistance to low-income and homeless children and families.
• Donate money, food, and clothing to homeless shelters and other charities in your community.
• Donate school supplies and books to underresourced schools in your area.
• Improve access to physical, mental, and behavioral health care for low-income Americans by eliminating barriers such as limitations in health care coverage.
• Create a “safety net” for children and families that provides real protection against the harmful effects of economic insecurity.
• Increase the minimum wage, affordable housing and job skills training for low-income and homeless Americans.
• Intervene in early childhood to support the health and educational development of low-income children.
• Provide support for low-income and food insecure children such as Head Start , the National School Lunch Program , and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) .
• Increase resources for public education and access to higher education.
• Support research on poverty and its relationship to health, education, and well-being.
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Official US poverty rate declined in 2023, but more people faced economic hardship

Professor of Social Welfare, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis

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Mark Robert Rank does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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The number of Americans living in poverty , according to the nation’s official definition, fell slightly to about 36.8 million in 2023, the Census Bureau announced on Sept. 10, 2024. The data released also indicated that the poverty rate declined a little. However, an alternative way to measure poverty ticked up, as more people in the U.S. faced economic hardship.

The Conversation U.S. asked Mark Rank, a sociologist who researches poverty and economic inequality , to explain the latest numbers and to share some of his insights about poverty in America.

What’s the most significant news?

I think the most interesting aspect of this report is the different directions the two measures of poverty went in 2023. On one hand, the official poverty measure declined to 11.1% in 2023 from 11.5% in 2022. At the same time, the supplemental poverty measure , an alternative way to measure poverty introduced in 2011, increased to 12.9% in 2023 from 12.4% a year earlier.

The official poverty rate fell because overall household income rose modestly in 2023 – even after taking inflation into account – according to other census data. However, like many poverty experts, I believe that the supplemental poverty measure is a better indicator of what’s going on because it takes into account household expenses as well as tax credits and the effects of government programs on reducing poverty.

It turns out that one key reason for the increase in the current supplemental poverty measure is that Social Security benefits and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – also known as SNAP or “food stamps” – pulled fewer people out of poverty in 2023 than in 2022.

The supplemental poverty measure also increased as the result of out-of-pocket medical expenses being higher in 2023 than in 2022.

Are there more meaningful ways to assess poverty in America?

The annual Census Bureau report only represents a year-by-year snapshot of poverty. I think estimating the long-term risk of impoverishment across a typical American’s lifetime is a more meaningful approach.

To that end, I’ve conducted research using a large nationally representative dataset from University of Michigan researchers who have tracked the same households each year since 1968. Based on this analysis, I’ve found that a clear majority of Americans will experience poverty for at least one year of their adult lives.

Some 58.5% of Americans will experience at least one year below the official poverty line between the ages of 20 and 75 , while 76% will either experience poverty or near poverty – meaning that their income falls below 150% of the poverty line.

The numbers presented in the annual Census Bureau report indicate that only about 1 in 9 Americans are facing poverty today. But my research shows that 3 out of 4 Americans will experience poverty or near poverty at some point in their lives. The result is that poverty should be viewed as an issue of “us” rather than an issue of “them.”

How does poverty in the US compare with what’s going on in similar economies?

The U.S. has one of the highest rates of poverty among Western industrialized nations. Whether the focus is on working-age adults, children, people over 65 or the population as a whole, the U.S. is near the top in terms of the extent and depth of its poverty .

One major reason is that the federal government does much less than its counterparts in many other countries to help people stay out of poverty. The U.S. safety net is relatively weak when it comes to protecting Americans from economic destitution.

The result is that the percentage of Americans experiencing poverty in any given year is among the highest among comparable nations.

In addition, the extent of both income and wealth inequality tends to be more extreme in the U.S. compared with other high-income countries.

How do you interpret the long-term patterns in the US poverty rate?

The U.S. made substantial progress in terms of reducing poverty in the middle of the 20th century. The poverty rate was cut in half from 22.4% in 1959 to 11.1% in 1973 .

This improvement was due to the robust economy of the 1960s and government initiatives known as the “ War on Poverty .” However, since 1973, the overall rate of poverty has ranged between 11% and 15%. It has tended to decline somewhat during periods of economic growth, and it has risen during periods of economic stagnation and recession.

The official poverty rate of 11.1% in 2023 matches the poverty rate in 1973. The supplemental poverty measure, which stood at 12.9% in 2023, reflects a similar lack of progress. It was first calculated in 2009, when it stood at 15.1%.

There are two major success stories, however.

First, older Americans have become less likely to experience poverty.

In 1959, 35.2% of people who were 65 and up were experiencing poverty – the highest rate of any age group. In 2023, only 9.7% of older Americans were in poverty , as indicated by the official rate, and that was among the lowest for any age group.

The primary reason for this reduction was the expansion of Social Security benefits and the introduction in 1965 of the Medicare and Medicaid programs . Without these programs, poverty for older Americans would rise to an estimated 40% .

The other major success story was that the share of U.S. children experiencing poverty fell substantially in 2021 as a result of the child tax credit expansion and the economic impact payments the federal government made to all Americans beginning in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked economic havoc.

As a result of these policies and others, the supplemental poverty measure among children fell by nearly half to 5.2% in 2021, from 9.7% in 2020. With the expiration of these benefits, the rate of childhood poverty has returned to pre-pandemic levels. According to the supplemental poverty measure, it rose to 13.7% in 2023 – the highest rate since 2018.

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2023 U.S. Census Poverty Data Shows the Consequences of Failing to Apply Lessons from Pandemic Anti-Poverty Measures

By Karen Dolan , Olivia Alperstein

FROM THE CRIMINALIZATION OF RACE AND POVERTY PROJECT AT THE INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES

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Washington, D.C. – Every September, the U.S. Census Bureau unveils crucial data on Americans’ poverty, health, and income for the previous year. The just-released 2023 results underscores the clear impact of enacting and then failing to renew effective solutions to reduce poverty.

“We failed again to learn the lessons of the successful pandemic anti-poverty measures,” warned Karen Dolan , Director of the Criminalization of Race and Poverty Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. “Data from 2023 shows that the Supplemental Poverty Measure ticked up to 12.9 percent , and the child poverty rate increased from 12.4 percent to 13.7 percent. It is vital that lawmakers enact and expand the anti-poverty solutions that have been proven to work, so we can decrease rather than increase the number of American families experiencing poverty. “

 If the threshold had been set using a different measure for inflation, calculated the same way as the Official Poverty Threshold, the Supplemental Poverty Measure would actually clock in at 12 percent — a modest decrease, statistically similar to the prior year.

Either way, the impact of pandemic anti-poverty measures – and the failure to renew them – is clear. Census data revealed that in 2021, 45 million fewer people were living in poverty than in 2020, despite the global pandemic and massive job losses. Stunningly, child poverty had been cut nearly in half , thanks to an expanded Child Tax Credit , and childhood hunger also fell, resulting in a record-low child poverty rate of just over five percent. Unfortunately, census data from 2022 showed a dramatic spike in poverty, especially child poverty, as the pandemic income supports expired, and there was no bipartisan action to extend them. Had the expanded Child Tax Credit been in place in 2023, it could have reduced child poverty from its current 13.7 percent down to 8.6 percent.

The American Rescue Plan of 2021 passed critically needed investments that paid off. It extended Unemployment Insurance, and nutrition assistance programs. It paused Student loan payments. It provided rental assistance and grants for small businesses to stay afloat. Healthcare subsidies kept people from losing coverage, and federal investments helped people to heat and cool their homes. The smart investments kept people from poverty and the economy strong as we experienced one the most rapid economic recoveries in US history.

The dramatic reduction in economic hardship in 2021 proves that healthy public investment in our families and communities works. Yet conservatives in both parties in Congress refused to extend or renew these successful programs, so child poverty and overall poverty spiked dramatically in 2022. This disturbing and preventable outcome continued in 2023.

Some key highlights:

• Had the expanded Child Tax Credit been in place in 2023, it could have reduced child poverty from its current 13.7 percent down to 8.6 percent .
• Overall, median household income increased by 4 percent , bringing the United States back in line with the pre-pandemic peak of 2019. 
• Increases were seen across income brackets, but full-time, year-round male workers saw a 3 percent increase in median earnings, whereas the same female workers saw only a 1.5 percent increase. 
• While white households saw over 5 percent increases in household income, Black, Latinx, and Asian household incomes saw no statistically significant rise from 2022.

Meanwhile, despite the destructive unwinding of pandemic support for programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the U.S Census Bureau 2023 data shows that 92 percent of Americans are covered by health insurance , not statistically different from 2022, with the biggest gains accruing to low-income as well as Black and Latinx people, according to Healthcare.gov. 

This is a testament to the remaining pandemic health enhancement – the Affordable Care Act’s premium subsidies, which allowed record numbers of Americans to afford health care through the ACA Marketplace. These subsidies expire in 2025, and unless Congress acts quickly to renew them, nearly 4 million people will lose access to health care coverage.

“Congress should learn from our experience with the pandemic social safety net and renew funding for critical proven anti-poverty solutions — along with the other expansions they’ve allowed to lapse. As the poverty data from 2021, 2022, and now 2023 show clearly, we must robustly invest in our families for the health of the nation, the economy, and the well-being of our children,” Dolan explained. “Each year that we refuse to do so will further entrench us in poverty and inequality. A different, better future is possible, and we know how to achieve it – we did it in 2021. All we need is the political will to do it again.”

To speak with IPS Criminalization of Race and Poverty Project Director Karen Dolan for comment or interviews, contact IPS Deputy Communications Director Olivia Alperstein at (202) 704-9011 or [email protected] . 

About the Institute for Policy Studies

For over six decades, the Institute for Policy Studies has served as a multi-issue research institution conducting path-breaking analyses on inequality issues and bold policy solutions to bridge the racial, wealth, and income gaps that divide us. Subscribe to IPS’s weekly newsletter to read our latest research and expert perspectives on urgent issues impacting communities in the U.S. and around the world. 

For press inquiries, contact IPS Deputy Communications Director Olivia Alperstein at (202) 704-9011 or  [email protected] . For recent press statements,  visit our Press page .

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Understanding Poverty in America

Authors: Kirk Johnson and Robert Rector

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Poverty is an important and emotional issue. Last year, the Census Bureau released its annual report on poverty in the United States declaring that there were nearly 35 million poor persons living in this country in 2002, a small increase from the preceding year. To understand poverty in America, it is important to look behind these numbers to look at the actual living conditions of the individuals the government deems to be poor.

For most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. But only a small number of the 35 million persons classified as "poor" by the Census Bureau fit that description. While real material hardship certainly does occur, it is limited in scope and severity. Most of America's "poor" live in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or welloff just a few generations ago. Today, the expenditures per person of the lowestincome onefifth (or quintile) of households equal those of the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation. 1

The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

• Fortysix percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a threebedroom house with oneandahalf baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
• Seventysix percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
• Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than twothirds have more than two rooms per person.
• The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
• Nearly threequarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.
• Ninetyseven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
• Seventyeight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
• Seventythree percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.

As a group, America's poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middleclass children and, in most cases, is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higherincome children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels. Most poor children today are, in fact, supernourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier that the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.

While the poor are generally wellnourished, some poor families do experience hunger, meaning a temporary discomfort due to food shortages. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 13 percent of poor families and 2.6 percent of poor children experience hunger at some point during the year. In most cases, their hunger is shortterm. Eightynine percent of the poor report their families have "enough" food to eat, while only 2 percent say they "often" do not have enough to eat.

Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

Of course, the living conditions of the average poor American should not be taken as representing all the poor. There is actually a wide range in living conditions among the poor. For example, over a quarter of poor households have cell phones and telephone answering machines, but, at the other extreme, approximately onetenth have no phone at all. While the majority of poor households do not experience significant material problems, roughly a third do experience at least one problem such as overcrowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty getting medical care.

The best news is that remaining poverty can readily be reduced further, particularly among children. There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and fathers are absent from the home.

In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.

Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly twothirds of poor children reside in singleparent homes; each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost threequarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

While work and marriage are steady ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to encourage work and marriage, remaining poverty would drop quickly.

What Is Poverty?

For most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. For example, the "Poverty Pulse" poll taken by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development in 2002 asked the general public the question: "How would you describe being poor in the U.S.?" The overwhelming majority of responses focused on homelessness, hunger or not being able to eat properly, and not being able to meet basic needs. 2

But if poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the 35 million people identified as being "in poverty" by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor. 3 While material hardship does exist in the United States, it is quite restricted in scope and severity. The average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines.

Ownership of Property and Amenities Among the Poor

Table 1 shows the ownership of property and consumer durables among poor households. The data are taken from the American Housing Survey for 2001, conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Census Bureau, and the Residential Energy Consumption Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy. 4

As the table shows, some 46 percent of poor households own their own home. The typical home owned by the poor is a threebedroom house with oneandahalf baths. It has a garage or carport and a porch or patio and is located on a halfacre lot. The house was constructed in 1967 and is in good repair. The median value of homes owned by poor households was $86,600 in 2001 or 70 percent of the median value of all homes owned in the United States. 5

Some 73 percent of poor households own a car or truck; nearly a third own two or more cars or trucks. Over threequarters have air conditioning; by contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the general U.S. population had air conditioning. Nearly threequarters of poor households own microwaves; a third have automatic dishwashers.

Poor households are wellequipped with modern entertainment technology. It should come as no surprise that nearly all (97 percent) poor households have color TVs, but more than half actually own two or more color televisions. Onequarter own largescreen televisions, 78 percent have a VCR or DVD player, and almost twothirds have cable or satellite TV reception. Some 58 percent own a stereo. More than a third have telephone answering machines, while a quarter have personal computers. While these numbers do not suggest lives of luxury, they are notably different from conventional images of poverty.

Housing Conditions

A similar disparity between popular conceptions and reality applies to the housing conditions of the poor. Most poor Americans live in houses or apartments that are relatively spacious and in good repair. As Chart 1 shows, 54 percent of poor households live in singlefamily homes, either unattached single dwellings or attached units such as townhouses. Another 36.4 percent live in apartments, and 9.6 percent live in mobile homes. 6

Housing Space

Both the overall U.S. population and the poor in America live, in general, in very spacious housing. As Table 2 shows, 70 percent of all U.S. households have two or more rooms per tenant. Among the poor, this figure is 68 percent.

Crowding is quite rare; only 2.5 percent of all households and 5.7 percent of poor households are crowded with more than one person per room. 7 By contrast, social reformer Jacob Riis, writing on tenement living conditions around 1890 in New York City, described crowded families living with four or five persons per room and some 20 square feet of living space per person. 8

Housing space can also be measured by the number of square feet per person. The Residential Energy Consumption survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy shows that Americans have an average of 721 square feet of living space per person. Poor Americans have 439 square feet. 9 Reasonably comparable international squarefootage data are provided by the Housing Indicator Program of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, which surveyed housing conditions in major cities in 54 different nations. This survey showed the United States to have by far the most spacious housing units, with 50 percent to 100 percent more square footage per capita than city dwellers in other industrialized nations. 10

America's poor compare favorably with the general population of other nations in square footage of living space. The average poor American has more square footage of living space than does the average person living in London, Paris, Vienna, and Munich. Poor Americans have nearly three times the living space of average urban citizens in middleincome countries such as Mexico and Turkey. Poor American households have seven times more housing space per person than the general urban population of verylowincome countries such as India and China. (See Appendix Table A for more detailed information.)

Some critics have argued that the comparisons in Table 3 are misleading. 11 These critics claim that U.S. housing in general cannot be compared to housing in specific European cities such as Paris or London because housing in these cities is unusually small and does not represent the European housing stock overall. To assess the validity of this argument, Table 4 presents national housing data for 15 West European countries. These data represent the entire national housing stock in each of the 15 countries. In general, the national data on housing size are similar to the data on specific European cities presented in Table 3 and Appendix Table A.

As Table 4 shows, U.S. housing (with an average size of 1,875 square feet per unit) is nearly twice as large as European housing (with an average size of 976 square feet per unit.) After adjusting for the number of persons in each dwelling unit, Americans have an average of 721 square feet per person, compared to 396 square feet for the average European.

The housing of poor Americans (with an average of 1,228 square feet per unit) is smaller than that of the average American but larger than that of the average European (who has 976 square feet per unit). Overall, poor Americans have an average of 439 square feet of living space per person, which is as much as or more than the average citizen in most West European countries. (This comparison is to the average European, not poor Europeans.)

Housing Quality

Of course, it might be possible that the housing of poor American households could be spacious but still dilapidated or unsafe. However, data from the American Housing Survey indicate that such is not the case. For example, the survey provides a tally of households with "severe physical problems." Only a tiny portion of poor households and an even smaller portion of total households fall into that category.

The most common "severe problem," according to the American Housing Survey, is a shared bathroom, which occurs when occupants lack a bathroom and must share bathroom facilities with individuals in a neighboring unit. This condition affects about 1 percent of all U.S. households and 2 percent of all poor households. About onehalf of 1 percent (0.5 percent) of all households and 2 percent of poor households have other "severe physical problems." The most common are repeated heating breakdowns and upkeep problems.

The American Housing Survey also provides a count of households affected by "moderate physical problems." A wider range of households falls into this category 9 percent of the poor and nearly 5 percent of total households. However, the problems affecting these units are clearly modest. While living in such units might be disagreeable by modern middleclass standards, they are a far cry from Dickensian squalor. The most common problems are upkeep, lack of a full kitchen, and use of unvented oil, kerosene or gas heaters as the primary heat source. (The last condition occurs almost exclusively in the South.)

Hunger and Malnutrition in America

There are frequent charges of widespread hunger and malnutrition in the United States. 12 To understand these assertions, it is important, first of all, to distinguish between hunger and the more severe problem of malnutrition. Malnutrition (also called undernutrition) is a condition of reduced health due to a chronic shortage of calories and nutriments. There is little or no evidence of povertyinduced malnutrition in the United States.

Hunger is a far less severe condition: a temporary but real discomfort caused by an empty stomach. The government defines hunger as "the uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack of food." 13 While hunger due to a lack of financial resources does occur in the United States, it is limited in scope and duration. According to the USDA, on a typical day, fewer than one American in 200 will experience hunger due to a lack of money to buy food. 14 The hunger rate rises somewhat when examined over a longer time period; according to the USDA, some 6.9 million Americans, or 2.4 percent of the population, were hungry at least once during 2002. 15 Nearly all hunger in the United States is shortterm and episodic rather than continuous. 16

Some 92 percent of those who experienced hunger in 2002 were adults, and only 8 percent were children. Overall, some 567,000 children, or 0.8 percent of all children, were hungry at some point in 2002. In a typical month, roughly one child in 400 skipped one or more meals because the family lacked funds to buy food.

Not only is hunger relatively rare among U.S. children, but it has declined sharply since the mid1990s. As Chart 2 shows, the number of hungry children was cut by a third between 1995 and 2002. According to the USDA, in 1995, there were 887,000 hungry children: by 2002, the number had fallen to 567,000. 17

Overall, some 97 percent of the U.S. population lived in families that reported they had "enough food to eat" during the entire year, although not always the kinds of foods they would have preferred. Around 2.5 percent stated their families "sometimes" did not have "enough to eat" due to money shortages, and onehalf of 1 percent (0.5 percent) said they "often" did not have enough to eat due to a lack of funds. (See Chart 3.)

Hunger and Poverty

Among the poor, the hunger rate was obviously higher: During 2002, 12.8 percent of the poor lived in households in which at least one member experienced hunger at some point. 18 Among poor children, 2.4 percent experienced hunger at some point in the year. 19 Overall, most poor households were not hungry and did not experience food shortages during the year.

When asked, some 89 percent of poor households reported they had "enough food to eat" during the entire year, although not always the kinds of food they would prefer. Around 9 percent stated they "sometimes" did not have enough to eat because of a lack of money to buy food. Another 2 percent of the poor stated that they "often" did not have enough to eat due to a lack of funds. 20 (See Chart 3.)

Poverty and Malnutrition

It is widely believed that a lack of financial resources forces poor people to eat lowquality diets that are deficient in nutriments and high in fat. However, survey data show that nutriment density (amount of vitamins, minerals, and protein per kilocalorie of food) does not vary by income class. 21 Nor do the poor consume higherfat diets than do the middle class; the percentage of persons with high fat intake (as a share of total calories) is virtually the same for lowincome and uppermiddleincome persons. 22 Overconsumption of calories in general, however, is a major problem among the poor, as it is within the general U.S. population.

Examination of the average nutriment consumption of Americans reveals that age and gender play a far greater role than income class in determining nutritional intake. For example, the nutriment intakes of adult women in the upper middle class (with incomes above 350 percent of the poverty level) more closely resemble the intakes of poor women than they do those of uppermiddleclass men, children, or teens. 23 The average nutriment consumption of uppermiddleincome preschoolers, as a group, is virtually identical with that of poor preschoolers but not with the consumption of adults or older children in the upper middle class.

This same pattern holds for adult males, teens, and most other age and gender groups. In general, children aged 011 years have the highest average level of nutriment intakes relative to the recommended daily allowance (RDA), followed by adult and teen males. Adult and teen females have the lowest level of intakes. This pattern holds for all income classes.

Nutrition and Poor Children

Government surveys provide little evidence of widespread undernutrition among poor children; in fact, they show that the average nutriment consumption among the poor closely resembles that of the upper middle class. For example, children in families with incomes below the poverty level actually consume more meat than do children in families with incomes at 350 percent of the poverty level or higher (roughly $65,000 for a family of four in today's dollars).

Table 5 shows the average intake of protein, vitamins, and minerals as a percentage of the recommended daily allowance among poor and middleclass children at various age levels. 24 The intake of nutriments is very similar for poor and middleclass children and is generally well above the recommended daily level. For example, the consumption of protein (a relatively expensive nutriment) among poor children is, on average, between 150 percent and 267 percent of the RDA.

When shortfalls of specific vitamins and minerals appear (for example, among teenage girls), they tend to be very similar for the poor and the middle class. While poor teenage girls, on average, tend to underconsume vitamin E, vitamin B6, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, and zinc, a virtually identical underconsumption of these same nutriments appears among upper middleclass girls.

Poor Children's Weight and Stature

On average, poor children are very wellnourished, and there is no evidence of widespread significant undernutrition. For example, two indicators of undernutrition among the young are "thinness" (low weight for height) and stuntedness (low height for age). These problems are rare to nonexistent among poor American children.

The generally good health of poor American children can be illustrated by international comparisons. Table 6 provides data on children's size based on the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Data Base on Child Growth: Children are judged to be short or "stunted" if their height falls below the 2.3 percentile level of standard heighttoage tables. 25 Table 6 shows the percentage of children under age five in developing nations who are judged to be "stunted" by this standard.

In developing nations as a whole, some 43 percent of children are stunted. In Africa, more than a third of young children are affected; in Asia, nearly half. 26 By contrast, in the United States, some 2.6 percent of young children in poor households are stunted by a comparable standard a rate only slightly above the expected standard for healthy, wellnourished children. 27 While concern for the wellbeing of poor American children is always prudent, the data overall underscore how large and wellnourished poor American children are by global standards.

Throughout this century, improvements in nutrition and health have led to increases in the rate of growth and ultimate height and weight of American children. Poor children have clearly benefited from this trend. Poor boys today at ages 18 and 19 are actually taller and heavier than boys of similar age in the general U.S. population in the late 1950s. Poor boys living today are one inch taller and some 10 pounds heavier than GIs of similar age during World War II, and nearly two inches taller and 20 pounds heavier than American doughboys back in World War I. 28

Poverty and Obesity

The principal nutritionrelated health problem among the poor, as with the general U.S. population, stems from the overconsumption, not underconsumption, of food. While overweight and obesity are prevalent problems throughout the U.S. population, they are found most frequently among poor adults. Poor adult men are slightly less likely than nonpoor men to be overweight (30.4 percent compared to 31.9 percent); but, as Chart 4 shows, poor adult women are significantly more likely to be overweight than are nonpoor women (47.3 percent compared to 32 percent). 29

Living Conditions and Hardships Among the Poor

Overall, the living standards of most poor Americans are far higher than is generally appreciated. The overwhelming majority of poor families are wellhoused, have adequate food, and enjoy a wide range of modern amenities, including air conditioning and cable television. Some 70 percent of poor households report that during the course of the past year they were able to meet "all essential expenses," including mortgage, rent, utility bills, and important medical care. 30 (See Chart 5.)

However, two caveats should be applied to this generally optimistic picture. First, many poor families have difficulty paying their regular bills and must scramble to make ends meet. For example, around onequarter of poor families are late in paying the rent or utility bills at some point during the year.

Second, the living conditions of the average poor household should not be taken to represent all poor households. There is a wide range of living conditions among the poor; while more than a quarter of the poor have cell phones and answering machines, a tenth of the poor have no telephone at all. While most of America's poor live in accommodations with two or more rooms per person, roughly a tenth of the poor are crowded, with less than one room per person.

These points are illustrated in Table 7, which lists the financial and material hardships among poor households in 1998. 31 During at least one month in the preceding year, some 20 percent of poor households reported they were unable to pay their fuel, gas, or electric bills promptly; around 4 percent had their utilities cut off at some point due to nonpayment. Another 13 percent of poor households failed, at some point in the year, to make their full monthly rent or mortgage payments, and 1 percent were evicted due to failure to pay rent. One in 10 poor families had their phones disconnected due to nonpayment at some time during the preceding year.

Overall, more than onequarter of poor families experienced at least one financial difficulty during the year. Most had a late payment of rent or utility bills. Some 12 percent had phones or utilities cut off or were evicted.

Poor households also experienced the material problems listed on Table 7. 32 Some 14 percent lacked medical insurance and had a family member who needed to go to a doctor or hospital but did not go; 11 percent experienced hunger in the household; and around 9 percent were overcrowded, with more than one person per room. Slightly less than 4 percent of poor households experienced upkeep problems with the physical conditions of their apartments or homes, having three or more of the physical problems listed in Table 7.

Overall Hardship

Altogether, around 58 percent of poor households experienced none of the financial or physical hardships listed in Table 7 These families were able to pay all their bills on time. They were able to obtain medical care if needed, were not hungry or crowded, and had few upkeep problems in the home. Another 20 percent of poor households experienced one financial or material problem during the year. Around 10 percent of poor households had two financial or material problems, while 12 percent had three or more.

The most common problem facing poor households was late payment of rent or utilities. While having difficulty paying monthly bills is stressful, in most cases late payment did not result in material hardship or deprivation. If late payment problems are excluded from the count, we find that twothirds of poor households had none of the remaining problems listed in Table 7. Some 22 percent had one problem, and 12 percent had two or more problems.

While it is appropriate to be concerned about the difficulties faced by some poor families, it is important to keep these problems in perspective. Many poor families have intermittent difficulty paying rent or utility bills but remain very wellhoused by historic or international standards. Even poor families who are overcrowded and hungry, by U.S. standards, are still likely to have living conditions that are far above the world average.

Reducing Child Poverty

The generally high living standards of poor Americans are good news. Even better is the fact that our nation can readily reduce remaining poverty, especially among children. To accomplish this, we must focus on the main causes of child poverty: low levels of parental work and high levels of single parenthood.

In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week through the year nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty. 33

The decline in marriage is the second major cause of child poverty. Nearly twothirds of poor children reside in singleparent homes; each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock. Increasing marriage would substantially reduce child poverty: If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost threequarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty. 34

In recent years, the United States has established a reasonable record in reducing child poverty. Successful antipoverty policies were partially implemented in the welfare reform legislation of 1996, which replaced the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with a new program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

A key element of this reform was a requirement that some welfare mothers either prepare for work or get jobs as a condition of receiving aid. As this requirement went into effect, welfare rolls plummeted and employment of single mothers increased in an unprecedented manner. As employment of single mothers rose, child poverty dropped rapidly. For example, in the quartercentury before welfare reform, there was no net change in the poverty rate of children in singlemother families; after reform was enacted, the poverty rate dropped in an unprecedented fashion, falling from 53.1 percent in 1995 to 39.8 percent in 2001. 35

In general, however, welfare reform has been limited in both scope and intensity. Even in the TANF program, over half the adult beneficiaries are idle on the rolls and are not engaged in activities leading to selfsufficiency. Work requirements are virtually nonexistent in related programs such as food stamps and public housing. Even worse, despite the fact that marriage has enormous financial and psychological benefits for parents and children, welfare reform has done little or nothing to strengthen marriage in lowincome communities. Overall, the welfare system continues to encourage idle dependence rather than work and to reward single parenthood while penalizing marriage.

If child poverty is to be substantially reduced, welfare must be transformed. Ablebodied parents must be required to work or prepare for work, and the welfare system should encourage rather than penalize marriage.

The living conditions of persons defined as poor by the government bear little resemblance to notions of "poverty" held by the general public. If poverty is defined as lacking adequate nutritious food for one's family, a reasonably warm and dry apartment to live in, or a car with which to get to work when one is needed, then there are relatively few poor persons remaining in the United States. Real material hardship does occur, but it is limited in scope and severity.

The typical American defined as "poor" by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

But the living conditions of the average poor person should not be taken to mean that all poor Americans live without hardship. There is a wide range of living conditions among the poor. Roughly a third of poor households do face material hardships such as overcrowding, intermittent food shortages, or difficulty obtaining medical care. However, even these households would be judged to have high living standards in comparison to most other people in the world.

Perhaps the best news is that the United States can readily reduce its remaining poverty, especially among children. The main causes of child poverty in the United States are low levels of parental work and high numbers of singleparent families. By increasing work and marriage, our nation can virtually eliminate remaining child poverty.

Robert E. Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies and Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., is Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Fellow in Statistical Welfare Research in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.

1 . Comparison of the average expenditure per person of the lowest quintile in 2001 with the middle quintile in 1973. Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey: Integrated Diary and Interview Survey Data, 1972-73, Bulletin No. 1992, released in 1979, and U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditures in 2001, Report No. 966, April 2003. Figures adjusted for inflation by the personal consumption expenditure index.

2 . See Campaign for Human Development, Poverty Pulse, January 2002, at www.usccb.org/cchd/povertyusa/povpulse.htm . Interestingly, only about 1 percent of those surveyed regarded poverty in the terms the government does: as having an income below a specified level.

3 . The Census Bureau defines an individual as poor if his or her family income falls below certain specified income thresholds. These thresholds vary by family size. In 2002, a family of four was deemed poor if its annual income fell below $18,556; a family of three was deemed poor if annual income was below $14,702. There are a number of problems with the Census Bureau's poverty figures: Census undercounts income, ignores assets accumulated in prior years, and disregards non-cash welfare such as food stamps and public housing in its official count of income. However, the most important problem with Census figures is that, even if a family's income falls below the official poverty thresholds, the family's actual living conditions are likely to be far higher than the image most Americans have in mind when they hear the word "poverty."

4 . U.S. Department of Commerce and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2001; U.S Department of Energy, Housing Characteristics, 2001, Appliances Tables, at www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/consumption .

5 . U.S Department of Commerce and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2001, Tables 3-1, 3-14.

6 . Ibid., p. 42.

7 . Ibid., p. 46.

8 . Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York: Dover Press, 1971), pp. 6, 41, 59.

9 . U.S. Department of Energy, Housing Characteristics 1993, 1995, pp. 46, 47. The figures in the text refer to total living space, including both heated and non-heated living space.

10 . United Nations Centre for Human Settlements and the World Bank, The Housing Indicators Program, Vol. II: Indicator Tables (New York: United Nations, 1993), Table 5.

11 . See Katha Pollitt, "Poverty: Fudging the Numbers," The Nation, November 2, 1998. Pollitt argues that it is misleading to compare the living space of poor Americans nationwide to that of average citizens in major cities in other nations, since European cities, in particular, have small housing units that are not representative of their entire nations. However, the author of the United Nations Housing Indicators report asserts that, in most cases, the average housing size in major cities can be taken as roughly representative of the nation as a whole. A comparison of the data in Table 4 and Appendix Table A would appear to confirm this.

12 . See, for example, A Survey of Childhood Hunger in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Food Research Action Center, Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project, 1995) and "1997 National Research Study," in Hunger 1997: The Faces and Facts (Chicago, Ill.: America's Second Harvest, 1997).

13 . U.S. Department of Agriculture, Household Food Security in the United States in 1995: Summary Report for the Food Security Measurement Project, 1997, p. 5.

14 . In all cases, the figures concerning hunger in this paper refer solely to hunger caused by a lack of funds to buy food and do not include hunger that is attributed to any other cause.

15 . Mark Nord, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson, Household Food Security in the United States, 2002, U.S. Department of Agriculture, October 2003, p. 7. The numbers in the text were taken from Table 1 of the USDA publication. Many individuals reside in households where at least one family member but not all family members experienced hunger. This is particularly true among families with children where the adults are far more likely than the children to experience hunger. According to Table 1of Household Food Security in the United States, 2002, 9.3 million persons lived in a household where at least one household member experienced hunger; however, not all of these persons experienced hunger themselves. The number of persons who experienced hunger individually was lower: 6.8 million people, including 6.3 million adults and 567,000 children.

16 . The numbers of persons identified as hungry throughout this paper correspond to individuals that the USDA identifies as "food insecure with hunger." The USDA also has a second, broader category: "food insecure without hunger." As the term implies, these individuals are not hungry. They may, however, at certain times in the year be forced to eat cheaper foods or a narrower range of foods than those to which they are ordinarily accustomed. According to the USDA, 7.6 percent of all households were "food insecure without hunger" in 2002. Food advocacy groups often inaccurately include the households that are "food insecure without hunger" in the count of households that are deemed hungry.

17 . Nord, Andrews, and Carlson, Food Security in the United States, 2002, p. 7. Additional data provided by USDA.

18 . Nord, Andrews, and Carlson, Food Security in the United States, 2002, p. 16.

19 . Ibid., p. 17.

20 . Calculated from USDA food security survey for 2001.

21 . C. T. Windham et al., "Nutrient Density of Diets in the USDA Nationwide Food Consumption Survey, 1977-1978: Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Dietary Density," Journal of the American Dietetic Association, January 1983.

22 . Interagency Board for Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research, Third Report on Nutrition Monitoring in the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), p. VA 167.

23 . U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrient Intakes by Individuals in the United States, 1 Day, 1989-91, Nationwide Food Survey Report No. 91-2, 1995.

24 . Ibid., Tables 10-1, 10-4. Table 4 in the present paper also provides the "mean adequacy ratio" for various groups. The mean adequacy ratio represents average intake of all the nutriments listed as a percent of RDA. However, in computing mean adequacy, intake values exceeding 100 percent of RDA are counted at 100, since the body cannot use an excess consumption of one nutriment to fill a shortfall of another nutriment.

25 . The World Health Organization uses standard height-for-age tables developed by the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department and Health and Human Services.

26 . M. de Onis and J. P. Habicht, "Anthropometric Reference Data for International Use: Recommendations from a World Health Organization Expert Committee," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1996, pp. 650-658.

27 . Calculation by the authors using National Health and Nutrition Evaluation Survey III data and WHO standard tables for shortness for age. Shortness for age is the result of genetic variation as well as nutritional factors. The World Health Organization standards assume that even in a very well-nourished population, 2.3 percent of children will have heights below the "stunted" cut-off levels due to normal genetic factors. Problems are apparent if the number of short children in a population rises appreciably above that 2.3 percent.

28 . Bernard D. Karpinos, "Current Height and Weight of Youths of Military Age," Human Biology, 1961, pp. 336-364. Recent data on young males in poverty provided by the National Center for Health Statistics of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, based on the second National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

29 . Interagency Board for Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research, Third Report on Nutrition Monitoring, Vol. 2, p. VA 219.

30 . Calculated from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Survey of Income and Program Participation, Extended Measures of Well-being Module, 1998.

32 . The Survey of Income and Program Participation, Extended Measures of Well-being Module also contains a question about whether members of the household needed to see a dentist but did not go. Because the question does not specify whether or not the failure to visit the dentist was due to an inability to pay, we did not include the question in this report.

33 . Robert E. Rector and Rea S. Hederman, Jr., " The Role of Parental Work in Child Poverty ," Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. CDA03-01, January 27, 2003.

34 . Robert E. Rector, Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., Patrick F. Fagan, and Lauren R. Noyes, " Increasing Marriage Would Dramatically Reduce Child Poverty ," Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. CDA03-06, May 20, 2003.

35 . Robert Rector and Patrick F. Fagan, " The Continuing Good News About Welfare Reform ," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1620, February 6, 2003.

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Poverty in the U.S. increased last year, even as incomes rose, Census Bureau says

The number of Americans living in poverty has gone up, even as incomes rose last year, the U.S. Census Bureau announced Tuesday .

Measuring poverty can be tricky − but the main number social scientists have for years looked at to capture the true number of people struggling to meet their basic needs ticked up to 12.9% in 2023, compared to 12.4% in 2022, according to the Census Bureau.

More Americans are struggling to afford necessities like rent, child care and medical expenses. That caused the Supplemental Poverty Measure − used by social scientists − to rise, even as the number of Americans living below the more standard Official Poverty Measure fell for the first time since 2019, due to rising incomes.

“People are paying more in rent, people aren’t getting as much childcare support. Even though they’re earning more they’re not really getting ahead," Timothy Smeeding, a leading expert on the poverty line, told USA TODAY.

The uptick in the national poverty rate announced Tuesday comes one year after the U.S. saw a larger spike in poverty , as many low-income Americans lost pandemic-era assistance, like extra food stamps. At this time last year, officials announced the share of Americans below the poverty threshold used by social scientists had risen from 7.8% to 12.4% .

The number of Americans living in poverty inched upwards in 2023 even as annual median household incomes increased. The last time median household incomes increased was before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Census Bureau said.

"We are back to that pre-COVID peak that we experienced," said Liana Fox, the Census Bureau's assistant division chief for economic characteristics, social, economic and housing statistics. "We're back to our median household income."

However, data released Tuesday shows the longstanding income gap between women and men widened for the first time in years, Fox said, as more woman worked but earned lower incomes. Last year was the first time the income gap between women and men widened since 2003, Fox said. Data released Tuesday shows for every $1 men earn, women earn 82.7 cents.

Child poverty also rose in 2023, the Census Bureau announced, as more families with low-incomes struggled to pay for housing, food, child care and other expenses. In 2022, the child poverty rate was 12.4%, and it ticked up to 13.7% in 2023, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.

Luke Shaefer, a poverty researcher and co-author of the book "Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America," said the U.S. has failed to reduce child poverty over the last two years because policymakers didn't keep the expanded child income tax credit.

In 2021, child poverty fell to a historic low of around 5% after households with children got more money in tax credits during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the expanded benefits were rolled back, child poverty rose sharply to pre-pandemic levels, Shaefer told USA TODAY.

“Today’s annual census data release is a stark reminder that child poverty in this country is a policy choice. We have proven solutions to address this crisis," said Shaefer, who also runs the nonprofit Rx Kids in Flint, Michigan , the first ever citywide cash assistance program for prescriptions for pregnant people and children up to age 1.

Incomes in America increased

In 2023, the median annual household income rose to $80,610 from $77,540 in 2022.

"There are more total workers and more full-time year-round workers," said Fox, explaining the rise in household incomes since 2019. "That's the biggest story, people are working more."

Even though incomes rose, the additional money in people's pockets wasn't enough to overcome costly bills like rent and child care, as well as other drains on people's incomes, like payroll taxes and work expenses, the Census Bureau said.

Another poverty measure, called the Official Poverty Measure − which only focuses on pre-tax income − went down in 2023, the Census Bureau said, even though the true number of Americans experiencing poverty increased.

“People are earning more but that doesn’t take account of any expenses, tax credits or taxes," Smeeding said.

What is the poverty level income?

In 2024, a family of four is living in poverty if they make less than $30,900 annually, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. But that number is tied to the Official Poverty Measure, which doesn't take into account different costs of living, unlike the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which considers living costs.

“The official poverty rate has got some issues. It doesn’t do a good job of capturing all the costs families face today," said Greg Acs, vice president for income and benefits policy at the Urban Institute, a social policy think tank.

Different states and zip codes across the U.S. have different Supplemental Poverty Measures. An easier way way to see how your household income stacks up against the cost of living in your area is to use living wage calculators , economists say.

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• v.44(5); 2020 Oct

Poverty and mental health: policy, practice and research implications

Lee knifton.

1 Centre for Health Policy, University of Strathclyde, Scotland, and Mental Health Foundation, Scotland and Northern Ireland

Greig Inglis

2 University of West of Scotland, Paisley

Associated Data

For supplementary material accompanying this paper visit https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2020.78.

This article examines the relationship between poverty and mental health problems. We draw on the experience of Glasgow, our home city, which contains some of Western Europe's areas of greatest concentrated poverty and poorest health outcomes. We highlight how mental health problems are related directly to poverty, which in turn underlies wider health inequalities. We then outline implications for psychiatry.

Doctors have often played leading roles in social movements to improve the public's health. These range from the early days of John Snow isolating the role of contaminated water supplies in spreading cholera, through to advocating harm reduction, challenging HIV stigma and, more recently, highlighting the public health catastrophe of mass incarceration in the USA. 1 Almost all examples are rooted in poverty. There is now increasing recognition that mental health problems form the greatest public health challenge of our time, and that the poor bear the greatest burden of mental illness. 2

Our article draws on data from Scotland, and especially Glasgow, which contains some of the areas of greatest need and widest health inequalities in Western Europe. However, the relationship between poverty, social stress and mental health problems is not a new phenomenon and was reported by social psychiatrists half a century ago in Langner & Michael's 1963 New York study 3 and consistently since then. Poverty is both a cause of mental health problems and a consequence. Poverty in childhood and among adults can cause poor mental health through social stresses, stigma and trauma. Equally, mental health problems can lead to impoverishment through loss of employment or underemployment, or fragmentation of social relationships. This vicious cycle is in reality even more complex, as many people with mental health problems move in and out of poverty, living precarious lives.

Poverty and mental health

The mental health of individuals is shaped by the social, environmental and economic conditions in which they are born, grow, work and age. 4 – 7 Poverty and deprivation are key determinants of children's social and behavioural development 8 , 9 and adult mental health. 10 In Scotland, individuals living in the most deprived areas report higher levels of mental ill health and lower levels of well-being than those living in the most affluent areas. In 2018 for example, 23% of men and 26% of women living in the most deprived areas of Scotland reported levels of mental distress indicative of a possible psychiatric disorder, compared with 12 and 16% of men and women living in the least deprived areas. 11 There is also a clear relationship between area deprivation and suicide in Scotland, with suicides three times more likely in the least than in the most deprived areas. 12

Inequalities in mental health emerge early in life and become more pronounced throughout childhood. In one cohort study, 7.3% of 4-year-olds in the most deprived areas of Glasgow were rated by their teacher as displaying ‘abnormal’ social, behavioural and emotional difficulties, compared with only 4.1% in the least deprived areas. By age 7, the gap between these groups had widened substantially: 14.7% of children in the most deprived areas were rated as having ‘abnormal’ difficulties, compared with 3.6% of children in the least deprived. 13 National data from parental ratings of children's behaviour show a similar pattern: at around 4 years of age, 20% of children living in the most deprived areas of Scotland are rated as having ‘borderline’ or ‘abnormal’ levels of difficulties, compared with only 7% living in the least deprived areas. 14

These findings reflect a broader pattern of socioeconomic inequalities in health that is observed internationally. 15 The primary causes of these inequalities are structural differences in socioeconomic groups’ access to economic, social and political resources, which in turn affect health through a range of more immediate environmental, psychological and behavioural processes. 16 , 17 A wide range of risk factors are more prevalent among low income groups for example, including low levels of perceived control 18 and unhealthy behaviours such as smoking and low levels of physical activity, 11 although these are best understood as mechanisms that link the structural causes of inequality to health outcomes. 17

Excess mortality and mental health in Glasgow

Glasgow has some of the highest Scottish rates of income deprivation, working-age adults claiming out of work benefits, and children living in low-income families. 19 Moreover, the city also reports poor mental health, relative to the Scottish average, on a host of indicators, including lower mental well-being and life satisfaction, and higher rates of common mental health problems, prescriptions for anxiety, depression or psychosis, and greater numbers of patients with hospital admissions for psychiatric conditions. 19

These statistics are consistent with Glasgow's overall health profile and high rates of mortality. Life expectancy in Glasgow is the lowest in Scotland. For example, men and women born in Glasgow in 2016–2018 can expect to live 3.6 and 2.7 fewer years respectively than the Scottish average. 20 Within Glasgow, men and women living in the most deprived areas of the city can expect to live 13.5 and 10.7 fewer years respectively than those living in the least deprived areas. 21

The high level of mortality in Glasgow can largely be attributed to the effects of deprivation and poverty in the city, although high levels of excess mortality have also been recorded in Glasgow, meaning a significant level of mortality in excess of that which can be explained by deprivation. For example, premature mortality (deaths under 65 years of age) is 30% higher in Glasgow compared with Liverpool and Manchester, despite the similar levels of deprivation between these cities. 22 Crucially, this excess premature mortality is in large part driven by higher rates of ‘deaths of despair’ 23 in Glasgow, namely deaths from suicide and alcohol- and drug-related causes. 22

It has been proposed that excess mortality in Glasgow can be explained by a number of historical processes that have rendered the city especially vulnerable to the hazardous effects of deprivation and poverty. These include the lagged effects of historically high levels of deprivation and overcrowding; regional policies that saw industry and sections of the population moved out of Glasgow; the nature of urban change in Glasgow during the post-war period and its effects on living conditions and social connections; and local government responses to UK policies during the 1980s. 24 On the last point, Walsh and colleagues 24 describe how the UK government introduced a host of neoliberal policies during this period – including rapid deindustrialisation – that had particularly adverse effects in cities such as Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool. While Manchester and Liverpool were able to mitigate the negative effects of these national policies to some extent by pursuing urban regeneration and mobilising the political participation of citizens, there were fewer such efforts made in Glasgow, which contributed to the diverging health profiles of the cities.

These researchers have also suggested that this excess mortality may partly reflect an inadequate measurement of deprivation. 24 However, that does not capture the reality of living in poverty. One aspect of this lived experience that may be important is the experience of poverty-based stigma and discrimination. 25 Stigma is a fundamental cause of health inequalities, 26 and international evidence has demonstrated that poverty stigma is associated with poor mental health among low-income groups. 27 Individuals living in socioeconomically deprived areas may also experience ‘spatial’ stigma, which similarly has a range of adverse health effects for residents 28 and, crucially, may be unintentionally exacerbated by media and public health professionals’ reports of regional health inequalities. 29 Given the continued focus on Glasgow's relatively poor health it is possible that the city is more vulnerable to such stigmatising processes. However, we stress that additional research will be required to test whether stigma is an important aspect of the lived reality of poverty, particularly as several psychosocial explanations have already been offered for the excess mortality, with varying levels of supporting evidence. 24 The notion of intersectional stigma is also gaining traction and requires further research.

Understanding the life-course impact of poverty on mental health is also important. Childhood adversity is one mechanism through which poverty and deprivation have an impact on mental health. Adverse childhood experiences, such as exposure to abuse or household dysfunction, are relatively common in the population. Marryat & Frank examined the prevalence of seven adverse childhood experiences among children born in 2004–2005 in Scotland, and found that approximately two-thirds had experienced at least one adverse experience by age 8. 30 Moreover, the prevalence was greatest in low-income households: only 1% of children in the highest-income households had four or more adverse childhood experiences, compared with 10.8% in the lowest-income households. Adverse childhood experiences are also strong predictors of mental health in adulthood: individuals who have experienced at least four are at a considerably greater risk of mental ill health, problematic alcohol use and drug misuse. 31 It has also been suggested that experiences of childhood adversity and complex trauma may contribute to Glasgow's – and Scotland's – excess mortality, particularly that which is attributable to violence, suicide and alcohol and drug-related deaths. 32 The implications are significant for psychiatry. Not only does it offer a broader explanation of causation; it also highlights the importance of supporting early interventions for young people's mental health and supporting the families – including children – of those experiencing mental health problems.

Implications

When faced with the scale of the challenge the response can be daunting. This is especially so at a time when we see increasing poverty and socioeconomic inequalities within our society and challenging political conditions. The complexity and enduring nature of the problems necessitate a multilevel response from psychiatry across practice, policy, advocacy and research, which we explore in this section. We argue that this response should address three broad areas.

Reinvigorate social psychiatry and influence public policy

The demise of social psychiatry in the UK and USA in recent decades has deflected focus away from the social causes and consequences of mental health problems at the very time that social inequalities have been increasing. Now is the time to renew social psychiatry at professional and academic levels. There is considerable scope to form alliances with other areas – especially public mental health agencies and charities. Psychiatry as a profession should support those advocating for progressive public policies to reduce poverty and its impact. If we do not, then, as Phelan and colleagues outline, we will focus only on the intermediate causes of health inequalities, rather than the fundamental causes, and this will ensure that these inequalities persist and are reproduced over time. 33 Activism with those who have consistently highlighted the links between poverty and mental health problems, such as The Equality Trust, may effect change among policy makers.

Tackle intersectional stigma and disadvantage

We must understand, research and tackle stigma in a much more sophisticated way by recognising that mental health stigma does not sit in isolation. We need to understand and address what Turan and colleagues define as intersectional stigma. 34 Intersectional stigma explains the convergence of multiple stigmatised identities that can include ethnicity, gender, sexuality, poverty and health status. This can then magnify the impact on the person's life. In this context, the reality is that you have a much greater chance of getting a mental health problem if you experience poverty. And if you do, then you will likely experience more stigma and discrimination. Its impact on your life will be greater, for example on precarious employment, housing, education and finances. It is harder to recover and the impact on family members may be magnified. Intersectional stigma remains poorly researched and understood, 35 although the health impact of poverty stigma is now emerging as an important issue in studies in Glasgow and elsewhere. 25

Embed poverty-aware practice and commissioning

We conclude with our third idea, to ensure that poverty-aware practice is embedded in services through commissioning, training and teaching. This means that recognising and responding to poverty is part of assessments and care. Income maximisation schemes should be available as an important dimension of healthcare: how to access benefits, manage debt, access local childcare and access support for employment at the earliest stages. This needs to be matched by a major investment in mental health services focused on low-income areas, to address the inverse care law. 36 These principles are already being put into action. For example across Scotland, including Glasgow, several general practices working in the most deprived areas (referred to as Deep End practices) have recently trialled the integration of money advice workers within primary care, which has generated considerable financial gains for patients. 37

About the authors

Lee Knifton is Reader and Co-Director of the Centre for Health Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, and Director of the Mental Health Foundation, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Greig Inglis is a lecturer in psychology at the University of West of Scotland, Paisley, Scotland.

Author contributions

Both authors were fully and equally involved in the design of the article, drafting the article and making revisions to the final version and are accountable for the integrity of the work.

Declaration of interest

Supplementary material.