Are They As Poor as the Government Says?

Most of those Americans now living below the official poverty line have possessions once considered part of a middle class standard of living, just a generation or so ago.  As of 2001, three-quarters of Americans with incomes below the official poverty level had air-conditioning (which only one-third of all Americans had in 1971), 97 percent had color television (which fewer than half of all Americans had in 1971), 73 percent owned a microwave oven (which fewer than one percent of all Americans had in 1971), and 98 percent of ‘the poor’ had either a videocassette recorder or a DVD player (which no one had in 1971).  In addition, 72 percent of "the poor" owned a motor vehicle.

None of this has done much to change the rhetoric of the intelligentsia, however much it may reflect major changes in the standard of living of Americans in the lower income brackets.  Professor Peter Corning, for example, has called the American economy "an ever-spreading wasteland of poverty" and said that "close to one-quarter of our population" are "struggling to meet their basic needs."  Similarly, Professor Andrew Hacker declared that "a rising proportion of children are growing up in homes without the means even for basic necessities."

Undefined terms like "basic necessities" and arbitrarily defined terms like "poverty" allow such rhetoric to flourish, independently of documented facts about rising living standards in the lower income brackets.  While such alarmist rhetoric abounds, specifics are conspicuous by their absence.  At one time, poverty meant that people were hungry or couldn’t afford adequate clothing to protect themselves against the elements.  Today it means whatever those who define the official poverty level want it to mean, so that says that X percent of the American population live in poverty is to say that they meet some ultimately arbitrary definition, which could be set higher or lower, causing half as many or twice as many to be called "poor."  Moreover, the income statistics so often cited tell us very little about the actual standard of living among people who receive the majority of their economic resources over and above whatever incomes they may be earning.


Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, P.49