First what does it mean to be poor? It turns out that’s not as simple to answer as one might think.
Doing research I found that “poor” means different things to different people. Some definitions seem to be rooted in the old institution of the poorhouse, which was a home for paupers. Poorhouses continued to exist well into the 20th century, in Ulster County, NY till 1976. Thus, dictionary.com defines “poor” as having little or no money or other means of support. To me that’s the definition of being destitute, not poor.
Other definitions have a more enlightened, broader, less pejorative, perspective. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it is as lacking sufficient money to have a decent living standard. This to me is more in keeping with a modern sensibility. Being poor is not being able to make ends meet consistently while maintaining a reasonable standard of living. The indigent thus become a subset of the poor.
Clearly, it is this second definition that encompasses the working poor; therefore it will be the definition used in this post. In our current system, one can work and still be poor, and thus often still dependent upon charity or public support in order to make ends meet. "Working poor" should be an oxymoron, but currently it's not.
Much has been written about the working poor in this country. Many, mostly Republicans, argue that it’s just a fact of life. Others, mainly Democrats, argue that in a country as prosperous as the United States, people working full-time should be receiving what’s termed a “living wage.”
What is a living wage? It’s defined as having enough money to meet a family’s basic needs at a decent standard of living, but absent what many Americans consider necessities of life. A “living wage” thus does not include money for eating out, entertainment, any kind of insurance, or saving for a rainy day. It is a step up from the poverty threshold, in that it takes into account the true cost of the necessities of life … food, child care, medical care, housing, and transportation … yet is still bare bones. Anyone earning below a living wage as defined would thus be classified as poor.
The Federal poverty threshold, on the other hand, is based on findings from 1960s research that families spent 1/3 of their income on food. So in setting the threshold, the government calculated the cost of food and multiplied it by 3. That is still the basis of the calculation. It’s just adjusted for inflation.
But that method of calculation makes the Federal standard outdated and woefully inadequate. Food now accounts for only 1/7 of an average family’s expenses, as the cost of housing, child care, transportation, and health care have grown disproportionately. So people who meet the Federal poverty threshold are still poor. That is why eligibility for many assistance programs have eligibility levels at several multiples of the Federal poverty threshold.
Why is the government standard so miserly? There are probably several reasons. One is the old perspective that many still hold that being poor means being close to destitution. Another is that as the leading democracy and strongest economy in the world, the government wants the number of people living in poverty to be as small as possible, for P.R. purposes. Yet another is that given our “safety net,” the more people who are classified as living in poverty, the higher the expenses are to the government and the taxpayer.
A different reason is that people do not like being called “poor” or being considered poor; in our culture it is still a pejorative word implying a whole panoply of failings. This can be seen in Webster’s definition of poverty, “lacking a socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.” Thus if you are poor you are beyond the social pale. As a result, there’s little pressure to expand the definition of poverty to include more people. Finally, people who are not poor just have no idea what being poor in our country means and how many people fall into the category.
Let’s look at actual dollar figures. The 2018 Federal poverty threshold for a family of four is just over $25,000. If the sole support for a family earned what many Democrats argue should be the minimum wage of $15 an hour, that would amount to a gross of $30,000 a year or an approximate net take home of $26,500. Just above the poverty threshold.
A living wage for a family of four, on the other hand, would be around $60,000, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator; more than twice the Federal poverty threshold. If you are supporting a small family, the minimum wage in most states is a poverty wage. Even the target of $15 is, as shown above, barely above the poverty threshold if there is only one adult in the family working. If the family had 2 adults and both were working full-time at $15 an hour, they would then together earn just under a living wage.
Thus, in order to have a living wage for a family of four … and remember what this does not include … either the single worker needs to have a pretty good job bringing in $60,000 a year, or two members of the household need to each earn $15 an hour and work full-time.
How many people make up the working poor, unable to make ends meet on a consistent basis? In 2012, using a guideline of 200% of the poverty line, which would be close to the living wage as explained above, 12 million full-time workers earned below that amount and constituted, in this particular analysis, the working poor.
In another report based on 2013 Census data, 1 out of 3 “working families,” 10.6 million out of 32.6 million, had incomes under 200% of the poverty line. While the definition of “working families” was not supplied, the numbers suggest that it is similar to the 2012 study noted above.
Even using the Federal government’s poverty guideline and definition of the working poor as people who spend 27 weeks or more a year in the labor force, in 2014, 9.5 million people were working poor. A much lower income threshold but a broader labor category.
No matter how you cut it, a large number of Americans are in families of the working poor. Using the living wage threshold, roughly 30-40 million. As to the total number of Americans under that threshold, I saw a 2012 figure of 100 million and a 2017 figure of 146 million. Obviously both can’t be right, but either way, it’s a large percentage of Americans.
Thus, somewhere between 1 in every 2 Americans and 1 in every 3 Americans were either living in poverty, as defined by the government, or were in families whose incomes were below the living wage threshold, what is also sometimes referred to as low-income, which means they were poor as defined in this post.
That is a terrible statistic for a country as prosperous as the United States. Poverty has a a terrible impact on most people and thus is a major drag on the health and well-being of our economy and democracy. It is also a disgrace and a failure of our system. A country should be judged not by how its wealthiest citizens fair, but by how its poorest do.
It would thus be in our best interest, in the best interest of all citizens including the top 1%, to do everything we can to see to it that the maximum number of people are employed at a living wage, whether in the open labor market or in government-organized jobs (such as the Depression-era WPA and CCC), and that those who cannot work receive government support sufficient to keep them out of poverty. Both our economy and democracy would be on a firmer footing.
No one in the U.S. should live in conditions without enough food to eat. a secure roof over their heads, and proper health care. One can’t pursue one’s right “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” without those basics. If business and government working together aren’t providing that foundation then we are not living up to the aspirations of the Declaration of Independence.
