WASHINGTON (AP) - The ranks of America's poor
are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century,
erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy
and fraying government safety net.
Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.
The Associated Press
surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both
nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and
found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1
percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a
more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put
poverty at the highest level since 1965.
Poverty is spreading at
record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and
suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are
giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid
begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including
in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where
voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
"I grew up going to Hawaii
every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to
make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of
Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled
out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson
County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.
Fritz says she grew up
wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned
after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing
bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off
food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the
Army but was injured during basic training.
Now she's living on
disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune,
25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay
their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know how they would
get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to
improve.
In an election year
dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's case highlights a
dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall
through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance,
Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.
"The issues aren't just
with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said
Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality
and Public Policy.
He pointed to the recent
recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as
globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less
unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after
strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low
of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's
war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and
other social welfare programs.
"I'm reluctant to say that
we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted
make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage
jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away
anytime soon," Edelman said.
Stacey Mazer of the
National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be
watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as
they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally
assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if
the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the budget,"
she said.
The predictions for 2011
are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on
suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an
analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and
Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.
The analysts' estimates
suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were poor
last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2
percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest
level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began
calculating poverty figures.
Poverty is closely tied to
joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved from 9.6 percent in
2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained
largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply stopped
looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also
grew.
Demographers also say:
-Poverty will remain above
the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several
predicted that peak poverty levels - 15 percent to 16 percent - will
last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a
jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.
-Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase again in 2011.
-Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.
-Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.
-Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.
Analysts also believe that
the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty
level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent.
"I've always been the guy
who could find a job. Now I'm not," said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters
Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas
in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the
nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in
poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.
Szymanski, who moved from
Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent living of more than
$40,000 a year but now doesn't work enough hours to qualify for union
health care. He changed apartments several months ago and sold his aging
2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses.
"You keep thinking it's going to turn around. But I'm stuck," he said.
The 2010 poverty level was
$22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an
official government calculation that includes only cash income, before
tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as
home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax
credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack
Obama's stimulus package.
An additional 9 million
people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food
stamps and tax credits were taken into account.
Robert Rector, a senior
research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the
social safety net has worked and it is now time to cut back. He worries
that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional
spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size
homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.
A new census measure
accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty figure isn't
expected to be released until after the November election. Since that
measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best gauge of
year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.
Few people advocate cuts in
anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of Americans think the gap
between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, according to a
Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News survey from
November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose "cutting
federal funding for social programs that help the poor" to help reduce
the budget deficit.
Outside of Medicaid,
federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food
stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly
1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s.
Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama's stimulus
program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax
credits for the poor.
The U.S. safety net may
soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose Gorrin, 52, who lives
in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens. Arriving from Cuba in
1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years,
providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007
and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the
occasional odd job.
His unemployment aid has run out, and he's too young to draw Social Security.
Holding a paper bag of
still-warm bread he'd just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn't
decided whom he'll vote for in November, expressing little confidence
the presidential candidates can solve the nation's economic problems.
"They all promise to help when they're candidates," Gorrin said, adding,
"I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don't know where
else I can go."
