Are the poor really poor?

In a post last month, I pointed out that income was a bad measurement in determining poverty.

A better measurement is to measure assets owned by the poor.

Walter Williams in true Walter Williams fashion points out the same issue.

Excerpt

In 1971, only about 32 percent of all Americans enjoyed air conditioning in their homes. By 2001, 76 percent of poor people had air conditioning. In 1971, only 43 percent of Americans owned a color television; in 2001, 97 percent of poor people owned at least one. In 1971, 1 percent of American homes had a microwave oven; in 2001, 73 percent of poor people had one. Forty-six percent of poor households own their homes. Only about 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. The average poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other European cities.

Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars. Seventy-eight percent of the poor have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception; and one-third have an automatic dishwasher.

One of the things Williams touches on in his column is self inflicted poverty.

What do you think distinguishes the high and low poverty populations? The only statistical distinction between both the black and white populations is marriage. There is far less poverty in married-couple families, where presumably at least one of the spouses is employed. Fully 85 percent of black children living in poverty reside in a female-headed household.

To add to WIlliams, I once read somewhere (I can't locate the source) that if a person graduates from high school, marries before having children and doesn't do drugs the likelihood that family will ever live in poverty is less than .5%.

So I would offer hat poverty is not an economic term as much as an emotional state of mind.