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."
Juggernaut8000 posted at 3:27 pm on Sun, Jul 22, 2012.
Maybe, these bums should get a job instead of relying on my taxes to pay for their lifestyles. If the stupid woman in the picture was able to keep her legs closed John Q taxpayer would not be paying for her offspring.
mvccd1000 posted at 1:45 am on Mon, Jul 23, 2012.
So she has no trouble deciding to have a kid and drop several hundred on a tattoo that looks fairly fresh, but she want us taxpayers to buy her food and help pay her bills?
I shouldn't be on the hook for her poor decisions.
Suziehaystack819 posted at 7:03 am on Mon, Jul 23, 2012.
If her boyfriend Garrett Goudeseune, 25, needs a landscaper job he should go to Mexico. I don't think there's any landscapers left there.
Arizona Willie posted at 8:30 am on Mon, Jul 23, 2012.
Loves of invading aliens claim Americans won't do the grunt work like landscaping but yet here is an American who WANTS a landscaping job and can't find one.
Perhaps if he overdosed on spray on tan and spoke Spanish he wouldn't have so much problem.
I know that's racist and I'm not really racist but there is an element of truth to it.
As an American citizen he is covered by the wage and hour laws and the workplace safety laws and landscaping contractors can't get away with stiffing him on his wages and make him work overtime for straight time etc. etc. Invading aliens can't complain because the contractor can report them and possibly get them deported.
But this story proves that the claim that Americans won't do that kind of work is false.
chuckles3 posted at 10:11 am on Mon, Jul 23, 2012.
The war on poverty is the longest, most expensive war in the history of the world.
Poverty reached its low point in the 70's, right after the programs started. Then the libs started moving the goal post. And more programs were added.
The poor get food stamps, free medical care, free housing, free cell phones, ....in most countries they would be middle class or better.
And, a 27 year old on disability? Really? She could have a baby out of wedlock, what is her disability? What 'job' is she unable to perform?
American Socialist posted at 10:23 am on Mon, Jul 23, 2012.
The Right loves poverty...
It keeps their sheep in line and desporate.
tularockstar posted at 12:32 pm on Mon, Jul 23, 2012.
Really? The Right loves poverty? Looked in the mirror lately? It's your Food Stamp President, who loves to create poverty and dependency of entitlement society! You liberals are so stoopid!
tularockstar posted at 12:35 pm on Mon, Jul 23, 2012.
Can we say that Oblamer has created a food stamp nation? In three years, the number of people on food stamps and disabilities jumped 39%! This socialist slime only cares about creating dependency on government and less on independence and entrepreneurship.
CSalafia posted at 7:36 pm on Mon, Jul 23, 2012.
Wow.
The comments in this thread are just disgusting, yet typical of the "I got mine, so scr3w you" philosophy of the GOP these days.
May God have mercy on your blackened, rotted souls.
Juggernaut8000 posted at 5:55 am on Tue, Jul 24, 2012.
Salafia,
I am not republican nor democrat, so you are wrong there. As well as your religious threat I don't believe in any of that fairy tale so your threat goes on deaf ears. I am disappointed in any adult who lacks the intelligence to realize religion is a made up story akin to santa claus.
People like you are the reason why this society needs to support this lazy and useless woman. The article indicates she was 'injured' in basic training. Allow me to interpret: She couldn't hack it and dropped out and claimed some false injury and now the taxpayer gets to support her and her litter.
Now please take your bleeding heart liberal vomit and choke yourself.