Some Journalists Discover that the USA has Poor People

I am consistently amazed at how often the facts reported by journalists is wrong and I cannot understand if it stems from ignorance or it is intentionally wrong. The headlines and cover stories in many papers and weekly magazines screamed that Katrina reignited the debate about how poverty is growing in America. As usual, the facts are very different from the headlines and the comments.

In a recent article in the Washington Post, an economics writer tries to straighten out truth from myth. (Robert J. Samuelson: Wednesday, September 21, 2005; Page A23) He says, (in red)

It's unclear whether most Americans are as oblivious to the problems of poverty, class and race as these journalistic pronouncements presume. But what is clear is that the leap from Katrina to broad generalizations about poverty involves considerable simplification.

One myth is that we haven't made any progress. Superficially, this seems believable. The government's poverty rate, released just as Katrina struck, was 12.7 percent in 2004. That's the proportion of people living beneath the official poverty line, about $19,300 for a family of four.

The current poverty rate is up from its recent low (11.3 percent in 2000) and similar to many earlier years (13 percent in 1980 and 12.6 percent in 1970). But the overall poverty rate is misleading. Since the late 1970s, it's generally fluctuated between 8 percent and 9 percent, for non-Hispanic Whites, depending on the economy.

But poverty among blacks -- though still appallingly high -- has declined sharply. In 2004 it was 24.7 percent, down from 33.1 percent in 1993, though up from 22.5 percent in 2000. As recently as 1983, it was 35.7 percent.

(We need to celebrate the progress of African Americans. This group has improved as much or more than any ethnic group in American history! Unfortunately, the media is still offering us a picture of crime laden poverty dwelling welfare recipients.)

Given these trends, the overall poverty rate should be drifting down. It isn't. The main reason, as I've written before, is immigration. We have uncontrolled entry of poor, unskilled workers across our southern border. Although many succeed, many don't, and many poor Latino immigrants have children, who are also poor. In 2004, 25 percent of the poverty population was Hispanic, up from 12 percent in 1980. Over this period, Hispanics represented almost three-quarters of the increase in the poverty population.

Many of the anti-poverty programs are working but we keep bringing in more and more poor immigrants. That is a good thing for the USA to do. In one generation most of them will leave poverty and claim the American dream of being able to work hard and enjoy the financial benefits of freedom and financial security.