Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 20, 1994                   TAG: 9404200087
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CENSUS REPORT

Nice thought. But millions of working Americans do live in poverty - and from 1979 through 1992, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau study, the numbers got worse rather than better.

If there's a silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud, it's that the same numbers offer hints on how to reverse course: a better-educated work force that's more adaptable to the changing needs of a changing economy.

It's not as if the poverty line were set artificially high. A family of four, for example, is considered impoverished if in 1992 dollars its annual household income was less than $13,092. Absent unusual conditions, a family of four with double that income would be hard-pressed to make ends meet; such a family with triple that income isn't exactly living in the lap of luxury.

Nevertheless, 18 percent of the nation's full-time workers were earning poverty-level incomes or less in '92, up from only 12 percent in '79.

All groups, including the college-educated, had a higher percentage of impoverished workers in '92 than 13 years earlier. But some groups were hit much harder than others. Among those aged 18 to 24, nearly half of all full-time workers without college degrees made poverty wages in '92, compared to less than a quarter in '79. By contrast, the rise in poverty-wage workers among the better-schooled was not only much smaller, but is also tempered by the fact that they comprise the only group of working Americans whose average after-inflation income has risen consistently in recent years.

Health-care reform, another rise in the earned-income tax credit and other measures could provide some help for the working poor. But if in America a full-time job is to be a guarantee against poverty, the only long-term answer is a labor force able by education and training to perform work of high quality and value.

Education doesn't guarantee a good job; it never did. But education - particularly if defined to include retraining to meet changing conditions in the employment market - traditionally has been a principal engine for upward economic mobility. It still is.