Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 10, 1993 TAG: 9310100037
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: D-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT PEAR THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
His optimism, as he now recalls, was based on historical trends. From 1961 to 1971, the number of poor people fell by more than one-third, to 25.6 million from 39.6 million. Many economists shared Lampman's belief that, with an active government and a growing economy, the poverty problem would be "solved in the near future."
Last week the Census Bureau reported different findings: even with the end of the latest recession, poverty is increasing. The number of poor people rose in 1992 for the third consecutive year, reaching 36.9 million, or 14.5 percent of the population. In 1971, it stood at 12.5 percent.
The standard of living for poor people is better in some ways than it was three decades ago, but in other ways it is worse.
Poverty statistics do not reflect the improvement attributable to many types of assistance. The standard definition of income, used in measuring poverty, excludes the value of non-cash benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps and housing subsidies.
Douglas J. Besharov, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said, "When you go into the home of someone on welfare, you will see more consumer goods and a higher standard of living than would have been imagined 30 years ago."
Through Medicaid, created in 1965, low-income people now have better access to health care. Many have food stamps, under a program created in the early 1960s. And "there has been a steady increase in the quality of the nation's housing stock," said Peter Eisinger, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin.
The continuing debate over the relative condition of poor people is itself remarkable. Peter T. Gottschalk, professor of economics at Boston College, said, "If you had told me in 1963 or 1973 that we'd be arguing, in 1993, whether poor people are marginally better off, I would have been incredulous."
The face of poverty today is much younger. Social Security - automatically increased each year to keep pace with inflation - and private pensions have sharply reduced poverty among the elderly. The poverty rate for the elderly fell below the rate for the nation as a whole in 1982, and it has been lower ever since.
But the poverty rate among children under 18, after declining to a low of 14 percent in 1969, rose to a peak of 22.3 percent in 1983 and now stands at 21.9 percent.
"The poor population is much less agricultural, much less rural than it once was," said Lampman, an economist.
Poverty has also deepened and become more concentrated. Ronald B. Mincy, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, said, "There are almost twice as many people living in concentrated poverty areas in 1990 as in 1980."
These areas, more often called ghettos, are defined as census tracts where at least 40 percent of the residents are poor. The number of people in such areas rose to 10.4 million in 1990 from 5.6 million in 1980 and 3.7 million in 1970.
The growing concentration of poverty occurs for various reasons. Poor people may move into a neighborhood. More affluent people may move out. Or incomes may decline, even when there is no migration.
In the 1970s, Mincy said, the concentration of poverty occurred mainly among blacks in major metropolitan areas. But in the 1980s, he said, "the growth in concentrated poverty was substantially higher among non-Hispanic whites in smaller metropolitan areas like Louisville, Ky., and Tulsa, Okla."
Poor people today have more Social Security and other government benefits, but may have less physical security. "Violent neighborhood crime, random shootings make life for the very poor much worse," said Besharov.
Frank Levy, a professor of urban economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggests poor people have dimmer prospects than 30 years ago because of changes in labor markets that work to the disadvantage of less-skilled workers.
"The gap between the earnings of a 30-year-old high school graduate and the earnings of a 30-year-old college graduate is wider than it was 30 years ago," said Levy. "More important, real wages were going up in the '60s, but now they're flat."
Likewise, Eisinger said, "The structure of employment opportunities has changed in the last 20 years with the relative decline in manufacturing employment, which is highly paid, and the enormous rise of low-paid service sector jobs."
A person working 30 hours a week and getting twice the minimum wage still does not earn enough to keep a family of four above the official poverty level, which last year was $14,335.
The poverty level - three times the amount of a low-cost food plan - was first set in 1964 and is adjusted annually to reflect the change in the Consumer Price Index.
by CNB