Historic high poverty ravages United States.
Figures released late blast week confirmed what most middle class Americans already knew from painful personal experience: Their incomes are falling, more American families are living in poverty than at any time since the Great Depression, and the gap between the highest 10% of income earners and the remaining 90% yawns open like a Grand Canyon of Despair.
The headline statistics: “America’s poverty rate is now the worst since 1993, according to a shocking report last week from the U.S. Census Bureau. Over forty-six million people are living in poverty, 2.6 million more than in 2009 and the poverty rate has reached 15.1 percent.” Just as importantly, after adjustments for inflation and value, working Americans’ wages steadily have fallen over the last two decades, so that the average paycheck has approximately 7% less purchasing power than it did in 1993. This steady decline translates to a terrifying historic watershed: For the first time in the nation’s history parents cannot promise that their children will have a better quality of life than they do.
The social consequences frighten political scientists.
Two of the statistics are especially troubling, because they set the stage for social unrest and violence.
First, more than 40% of America’s school-aged children live in poverty, and requests for school breakfast and lunch assistance have tripled in the last ten years. These economic and social pressures influence elementary school children’s readiness for learning, substantially cutting literacy and numeracy rates. More importantly they, contribute immensely to alarmingly high dropout rates among secondary school students—especially in the inner cities, where unemployment rates are climbing toward 50%
Second, African-American and Latino families have more than four times the poverty and unemployment rates of Caucasians. And the ramifications suggest disadvantaged Americans will have to work extraordinarily hard to break poverty’s vicious cycle. The majority of impoverished families have no healthcare plans above and beyond what the state and federal governments provide; and they have no dental care whatsoever. Three in five of these families cannot provide at least one nutritious meal each day, so that malnutrition makes them more vulnerable to disease and contributes to absenteeism at school and work. Just as importantly, severe economic disadvantage widens the digital divide, undermining academic achievement by restricting access to learning tools. College attendance among African-American and Latino men has fallen to its lowest rate since World War II, limiting access to the few jobs resourceful employers have created.
One political science professor summarizes the statistics’ social and political consequences: “We used to speculate about the possibility of ‘third-world America’,” she says. “Now, we see it right down the street from what used to be middle class neighborhoods. And with it we see increased likelihood of homegrown terrorism and class-motivated violence. The United States is not so very different from Egypt, very little less volatile.”
