- Americans in poverty at greater risk for chronic health problems, By Danielle Kurtzleben, October 30, 2012, U.S. News & World Report: “Poverty doesn’t just mean trouble making ends meet and having few assets. According to data from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, Americans in poverty are more likely to suffer from a variety of chronic health problems, both psychological and physical. Of the illnesses tracked in a Gallup report on the data, depression has the greatest gap between those in poverty and not in poverty. Nearly 31 percent of adults who lived below the poverty line in 2011 said they had been diagnosed with depression at some point, almost twice as high as the rate for those not in poverty — 15.8 percent. The share of adults in poverty with asthma (17.1 percent) or obesity (31.8 percent) was also roughly 6 percentage points higher in each case than the share of adults not in poverty. The study also showed that diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attacks were slightly more likely to afflict those in poverty than those who are not…”
- Study: When resources are scarce, most people forfeit the future, By Mark Roth, November 2, 2012, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Poor people are often criticized for self-defeating behaviors, from taking out high-interest payday loans as a way of getting through the week, to not putting aside money for the future. But a new study published today in Science magazine suggests that most of us are likely to behave that way when we are faced with a shortage of resources…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty