poverty note

In America, poverty is a more complex issue. The poor in America live, in many ways, better than the middle classes in other developed countries. The average American poor family has a color TV set (97%) with cable or satellite reception (62%), owns a car (73%), and lives in air conditioning (76%). Forty-six percent of poor families own their own homes. Poverty in America has decreased from 22% of the population in 1960 to 12.5% today. The poverty rate would be much lower if the US did not accept more immigrants than all other nations combined. Most important is the fact that the poor in America do not, in general, remain poor for very long. This is the conclusion of a University of Michigan socioeconomic study that has been tracking over 50,000 Americans since 1968. In Myths of the Rich and Poor, Michael Cox and Richard Alm showed that only 5% of families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution in 1975 were still there in 1991. More than 75% of the families in that lowest quintile in 1975 had made their way up to the two highest quintiles by 1991. Over half of the lowest quintile moved to a higher quintile in only four years. This degree of upward mobility is truly remarkable and not experienced anywhere else in the world.