Introduction
In the U.S, people living in poverty are so diversified to the extent that, they can’t be described along a particular dimension. To do this, poverty data should be presented by selective characteristics i.e. age, the composition of families, citizenship, and Hispanic origination. This is the best way of illustrating how the rates of poverty differ.
Main body
The federal government has its way of poverty measurement. The United States uses sets of wealth-income thresholds, which differ by the sizes of families and their composition to identify poor persons. If for example, the entire earnings of a particular family are lesser than its threshold, then every person in it is regarded, as poor. These thresholds do not differ with certain localities; instead, they are brought up to date yearly for inflation by use of the CPI (Consumer Price Index). The official description counts up cash proceeds before taxing not including capital gains and non-cash benefits i.e. public accommodation, Medicaid, or food stamps. This term is also not applicable for individuals in armed forces barracks, organizational group residence, and unrelated persons fifteen years of age and below i.e. foster children. They are left out of the poverty world because; they are neither regarded as being poor nor privileged.
The federal government also presents poverty information by use of 2 other measures: “the ratio of income to poverty threshold and the income deficit. The ratio of income to poverty threshold shows the number of people with incomes below multiples of their poverty thresholds;” (Dalaker, 7) the proceeds shortage, illustrates the dollar variation between a family’s earnings and its particular poverty threshold. It is also important to note that, “since the income items specify a period covering the last 12months, the appropriate poverty thresholds are determined by multiplying the base-year poverty thresholds (1982) by the monthly inflation factor based on the12 monthly CPIs and the base-year CPI” (Dalaker, 21).
Poverty in the U.S has been gradually declining ever since the previous financial recession. The state of poverty is still regarded to be higher than that of the 1970s. This is when a total war on poverty was launched by the Kennedy/Johnson administration. In 1998 for example, poverty thresholds for single persons staying alone were 8,316 dollars. Those of two grown-ups or couples were 10,634 dollars; a family of three was 13,133 dollars while a family of four was 16, 530 dollars.
As shown by the American Census Bureau, over 35.9 million persons are poor in the U.S. IN 2009; poor people were over 3.8 million more than in 2008. Officially the rate of poverty was at14.3%. In 2008, the rate was at 13.2%, which was regarded as the 2nd statistically important yearly rise since 2004. Poor individuals in 2009 were 43, 600,000, up from 39,800,000 the previous year, this was the 3rd successive yearly rise reflecting a poor economy.
“Family poverty-rates and families in poverty last year were 11.1 percent and 8.8 million, up from 10.3 percent and 8.1 million in 2008, while the poverty rate and the number of people living in poverty rose across all types of households” (Dalaker, 32). This is the highest rate since 1994, on the other hand, it is 8.1% lesser than that of 1959 (the first time these estimates were availed).
Conclusion
Currently, individuals lacking health insurance are 50,700,000 up from 46,300,000 in 2008 a 1.3% increase. Additionally, census information shows that individuals insured through their employers have dropped from 176,300,000 to 169,700,000. On the other hand, Medicaid coverage is up from 42,600,000 to 47,800,000.
Works cited
Dalaker, Joseph. Poverty in the United States. Poverty.com. 2000. Web.