Since the beginning of the War on Poverty, the poverty rate has fluctuated widely, and at the same time the poverty population has undergone many changes, some mirroring the changing stereotypes of the poor and others less pronounced than the changing stereotypes would lead us to believe. A feminization of poverty has occurred, with many more of the poor now in households headed by women. Interestingly, aging of the poverty population has not occurred despite growth in the elderly segment of the overall population. Concerning turnover in the poverty population, we find that despite poverty theories emphasizing persistence, recurrent poverty is relatively rare and poverty is not generally passed from one generation to the next. Poverty prevention has come from both economic growth and government transfers; however, inequality in economic growth has contributed to poverty. With the proportion of elderly and female-headed households likely to continue at a high level into the future, poverty rates are also likely to remain high unless government transfers are increased.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
1. Beth B. Hess, “New Faces of Poverty,”American Demographics, 5(5): 26 (May 1983).
2.
2. Kenneth Auletta, The Underclass (New York: Random House, 1982).
3.
3. There are compelling arguments for the inclusion of the market value of food stamps or housing subsidies as part of family resources available for satisfying basic needs, especially if recipients augment these benefits with additional expenditures of their own. Inclusion of the market value of medical benefits from programs such as Medicare and Medicaid in the income measure without adjustment to the recipient's needs standard is more problematic. These medical programs are designed to pay for extraordinary medical needs—medical needs that entail expenses far above the typical medical expenses that are assumed when determining the minimal needs thresholds. One way of circumventing a substantial part of this problem is to value access to Medicare and Medicaid as the cash equivalent of an insurance policy with similar medical coverage. With this method of valuation, however, the disabled would be assigned greater in-kind benefits than the nondisabled, yet their needs would still reflect those with the average situation. It could be argued that, in effect, a family's needs level should be adjusted upward by close to the same level as its income is when evaluating Medicare and Medicaid benefits at their market value. Alternatively, these benefits could be valued at a rate equal to fulfillment of the medical needs level assumed in the minimal needs thresholds.
4.
4. The food needs standard that forms the basis for the official poverty thresholds is the most parsimonious of the several different food cost estimates prepared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As such, it is subject to criticism as being unrealistically low. Although the National Research Council has designated it as generous enough for “nutritional adequacy,” this food needs standard was deemed appropriate only for “temporary or emergency use.” It assumes considerable sophistication in food purchase and preparation, as well as home preparation of all meals. Many critics have argued that a more realistic needs standard might be one 25 percent higher than this one that has been used for official poverty figures.
5.
5. Hess, “New Faces of Poverty,” p. 28.
6.
6. Both the culture of poverty—Michael Harrington, The Other America (New York: Macmillan, 1962); Oscar Lewis, A Study of Slum Culture: Backgrounds for la Vida (New York: Basic Books, 1968)—and the underclass theories—Auletta, Underclass—emphasize the permanency of poverty. Many proponents of the culture of poverty theory argued that the poor, or at least a segment of the poor, had a distinct culture that kept them mired in poverty. These ideas resurfaced in the underclass theories, which hold that segments of the poor have values and psychological traits that produce behavioral difficiencies and inhibit their achievements and that are passed on to the next generation through socialization of the youth.
7.
extended this work considerably, as have Richard D. Coe, “Dependency and Poverty in the Short and Long Run” in Five Thousand American Families: Patterns of Economic Progress, ed. Duncan and Morgan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 1978), 6:273-296; Lee Rainwater, “Persistent and Transitory Poverty: A New Look,” mimeographed (Cambridge, MA: Joint Center for Urban Studies, 1980); Martha S. Hill, “Some Dynamic Aspects of Poverty,” in Five Thousand American Families: Patterns of Economic Progress, ed. Martha S. Hill, Daniel H. Hill, and James N. Morgan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 1981), 9:93-120; Mary Jo Bane and David T. Ellwood, “Slipping into and out of Poverty: The Dynamics of Spells,” mimeographed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1983); and Greg J. Duncan, Richard D. Coe, and Martha S. Hill, “The Dynamics of Poverty,” in Years of Poverty, Years of Plenty, ed. Greg J. Duncan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 1984), pp. 33-70.
8.
8. As Bane and Ellwood's “Slipping into and out of Poverty” indicates, this definition of persistent poverty fails to take account of the fact that lengthy spells of poverty may be beginning or ending during the observation period. If one is interested in persistent poverty that includes poverty persistence that is just ending, poverty persistence that is in process, and poverty persistence that is just beginning then Bane and Ellwood's completed-spell approach is the more appropriate.
9.
9. Duncan, Coe, and Hill, “Dynamics of Poverty.”
10.
10. Bane and Ellwood, “Slipping into and out of Poverty.”
11.
11. Richard D. Coe, Greg J. Duncan, and Martha S. Hill, “Dynamic Aspects of Poverty and Welfare Use in the United States” (Paper delivered at the Conference on Problems of Poverty, Clark University, Worcester, MA, Aug. 1982; revised Mar. 1983).
12.
12. Martha S. Hill, Sue Augustyniak, Greg J. Duncan, Gerald Gurin, Jeffrey K. Liker, James N. Morgan, and Michael Ponza, “Final Report of the Project: `Motivation and Economic Mobility of the Poor,' Part 1: Intergenerational and Short-Run Dynamic Analyses” (Report, Survey Research Center, University of Michigan, Aug. 1983).
13.
13. Mary Corcoran and Martha S. Hill, “Unemployment and Poverty,”Social Service Review, 54:407-413 (1980).
14.
14. Levy, “How Big Is the American Under-class?”
15.
15. Sheldon Danziger, Alternative Measures of the Recent Rise in Poverty, Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper no. 740-83 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, Institute for Research on Poverty, 1983).
16.
16. Peter Gottschalk and Sheldon Danziger, “Macroeconomic Conditions, Income Transfers and the Trend in Poverty” in The Social Contract Revisited, ed. D. Lee Bawden (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 1984).
17.
17. Peter Gottschalk, Will a Resumption of Economic Growth Reverse the Recent Increase in Poverty?, Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper no. 740-83 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, Institute for Research on Poverty, 1983).
18.
18. Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottschalk, “The Measurement of Poverty,”American Behavioral Scientist, 26:739-756 (July-Aug. 1983).
19.
19. Judith Treas, “Trickle Down or Transfers? Postwar Detriments of Family Income Inequality,”American Sociological Review, 48(4):546-559 (Aug. 1983).
20.
20. Gottschalk and Danziger, “Macroeconomic Conditions.”
21.
for 2000, Andrew Cherlin and Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., “The American Family in the Year 2000,”Futurist, 17(3):7-14 (June 1983).
22.
22. Peter Gottschalk, “Transfer Scenarios and Projections of Poverty into the 1980s,”Journal of Human Resources, 26(1):41-60 (Winter 1981).
23.
23. Ibid., p. 57.
24.
24. See Frank Levy's discussion in American Families and the Economy, ed. Nelson and Skidmore (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1983) pp. 53-54.
25.
25. Masnick and Bane, Nation's Families: 1960-1990.
