80% of American Adults Face Poverty
Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness,
near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign
of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to
renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches
that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and
reverse income inequality.
As nonwhites approach a numerical majority in the
U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the disadvantaged should be
best focused – on the affirmative action that historically has tried to
eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major impediment to economic
equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status for all, regardless of
race.
Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based
on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families'
economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the
most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy
"poor."
"I think it's going to get worse," said
Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in
Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and
vegetable stand with her boyfriend but it doesn't generate much income. They
live mostly off government disability checks.
"If you do try to go apply for a job, they're
not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to even go to work,"
she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better to do than to get on
drugs."
Nationwide, the count of America's poor remains
stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15 percent of the population, due in
part to lingering high unemployment following the recession. While poverty
rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by absolute
numbers the predominant face of the poor is white.
More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty
line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of
the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.
Sometimes termed "the invisible poor" by
demographers, lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs as well as
small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white.
Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in the industrial
Midwest and spread across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and
Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.
Buchanan County, in southwest Virginia, is among the
nation's most destitute based on median income, with poverty hovering at 24
percent. The county is mostly white, as are 99 percent of its poor.
More than 90 percent of Buchanan County's
inhabitants are working-class whites who lack a college degree. Higher
education long has been seen there as nonessential to land a job because
well-paying mining and related jobs were once in plentiful supply. These days
many residents get by on odd jobs and government checks.
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