http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/upload/bg_2064.pdf
Earlier, I had posted only the executive summary. Here is the original article as a 19 page PDF file with dozens of charts and direct referential links to the reports in which you have an interest.. So, knock yourself out!
this is article is by the same scholar whose study of the economic and social impact of illegal immigration stopped the rush to pass the Kennedy McCain amnesty bill in its tracks last year. this guy ain't no light weight crack pot. his work is taken very seriously in think tanks across the US. .
with dozens of charts and direct referential links to the reports in which you indicated an interest.
Sorry,
Broke. Wthin a page and a half of reading, the article already made an assumption from the Census' records that it didn't state:
e.g.
From the article: "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."
One column down, the article says:
"Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning...
His home is in good repair and not overcrowded..."
Huh?
Excuse me? How did the article writer know that? Not from the Census bureau based on the information shown so far. According to the article to this point, the Census Bureau only reported that a percentage of the poor
owned their own homes. It said nothing about the condition of said homes. And unless the U.S. Census is in the business of property inspections, I'm not sure how they
would know.
I like the chart about the "Ownershp and Property of Consumer goods". Hey, 91.3% of poor people have phones. I know some who do. They don't have
service for those phones, but they have them.
Is the rest of the article going to have such misleading statements and useless charts as this? I'm only one 1.5 pages into it and don't want to waste my time.
WARNING PERSONAL ANECDOTE:
My mother's cousin is poor. But hey, she owns her own home. The roof is falling in and she can't afford to fix it and the city is threatening to condemn it. But she has no where else to go if they evict her. She sank all her money in that home when she had some coming in and now she doesn't.
i.e. She didn't start off poor, but she's ended up that way.
EDITED: OK, at page 9 and the article states that the American Housing Survey tosses off structural instability and people living in hovels they're unable to repair with one sentence:
"However, the problems affecting these units are clearly modest...upkeep and the use of unvented oil, kerosene or gas heaters..."
I don't consider inability to keep up a home - a "modest" problem. I wonder how low one has to go to be considered suffering and poor by this writer's standards? Heating your food by a fireplace? The only heating/cooking source in some people's homes being a Coleman kerosene lamp isn't apparently a sign of poverty.