Living in Poverty

Last week, the government issued poverty figures for the year. As I stated then, income figures are a bad way to determine whether someone lives in poverty.

The first two years I started my business, I would have been counted as living in "poverty" because my income was below the poverty figures, yet I owned my house, a car, the business property, etc.

The Heritage Foundation ran through the US Census Bureau figures and this is what they found.

• Forty-three percent of all poor households actu­ally own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
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• Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
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• Only 6 percent of poor households are over­crowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
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• The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
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• Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
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• Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
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• Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
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• Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher...

So when a "poor" person owns a TV, VCR, cell phones, etc. are they, in fact, "poor"?

Hat Tip Porkopolis.