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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
this seems to indicate that the number of people living in poverty is right about average since records started being kept... actually much better than it was in the 60s.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/h.../hstpov13.html
i think the biggest change is what people consider an "living wage" to be. what do you all mean when you say "living wage"? personally, i don't think a living wage necessarily includes home ownership or the ability to pay for a college education.
irateplatypus' working definition for a living wage: enough money to...
1) cloth yourself and all dependents modestly.
2) enough to have 3 meals a day cooked at home.
3) pay heating and electricity bills.
4) have a living space big enough so that no more than 2 people live in a single room.
5) drive a safe vehicle
6) meet all those needs and still be able to save 10% of income or use as discretionary spending.
i think it's the government's responsibility (and sometimes that means getting the hell out of the way) to make "living wage" fit under something like those criteria. |
that mirrors the definition I provided towards the top of this thread. Researchers call it a "self-sufficiency standard," and they found it to be $38,000 using the criteria you laid out.
Irate, it's important to note that the poverty threshold is currently set at $18,362 (2002) for a family of 4. But just as important, the bulk of families in poverty to not come close to that line. They do not, for example, make $16,000, but rather <$9,000. Without pulling my lecture notes out, the number is around half that live on that amount.
That is
gross wage and
includes transfers (subsidies, and etc., they don't get added to the 9K).
Increasing the threshold won't pull those people out of proverty (this is in response to a reply to me above from someone else), but it will make more poor workers elligable for services like health care, child care, low-income housing, and food stamps.
EDIT: pulled my notes out. BTW, professor is Elliot Currie (I think I already provided a link to an interview, but a google will give you a profile of him) and the course is Community Context of Crime. It's an undergraduate course and I'm the assistant (as well as his advisee).