Middle class dropouts, By Tami Luhby, January 11, 2012, CNNMoney.com: “Nearly one third of Americans who were raised in the middle class dropped down the economic ladder as adults — and that’s before the Great Recession hit. ‘Being raised in the middle class is not a guarantee that you’ll have that same status as an adult,’ said Erin Currier, project manager at Pew’s Economic Mobility Project. ‘With all the economic turmoil in the past four years, there’s good reason to think that downward mobility is more severe.’ Pew looked at children born in the early- to mid-1960s and assessed their economic status roughly 40 years later. Being middle class in the parents’ generation meant a household income of roughly $33,000 to $64,000 in 1979. But their children had to earn between $54,000 and $111,000 to maintain their relative standing in society in the mid-2000s…”
Tag: Near poor
Census Data on Income and Poverty
1 in 2 people are poor or low-income, census shows, By Hope Yen (AP), December 15, 2011, New Orleans Times-Picayune: “Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families. ‘Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too ‘rich’ to qualify,’ said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty…”
Poverty Measurement in the US and Canada
- The Near Poor: Many educated, employed Americans struggle to make ends meet, By Elizabeth Stuart, November 30, 2011, Deseret News: “Federal poverty statistics may not paint an accurate picture of how Americans are getting along economically, two new studies suggest. About 45 percent of U.S. residents who are not considered poor by federal standards don’t have enough money for basic expenses like housing, food and health care, according to a new study by the advocacy group Wider Opportunities for Women. And the number of people hovering just above the federal poverty threshold is 76 percent higher than official records indicate, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data published in the New York Times…”
- In U.S., Canada, new measures of the poverty line, By Miles Corak, November 28, 2011, Globe and Mail: “U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Rebecca Blank — a capable, no-nonsense, PhD in economics, and a former Dean at the University of Michigan — to his new administration, and told her to answer a simple question: How should the United States measure poverty? Blank did an end-run around the sad politics that has characterized discussions of poverty measurement in the U.S. by having the Census Bureau develop an entirely new indicator that reflects the realities of participating in contemporary American society…”