Neil Wollman and a team of other researchers produce the National Index of Violence and Harm, a project of the Manchester College Peace Studies Institute; www.manchester.edu/links/violenceindex [5]
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Several statistically significant trends emerged in a study of US Census data by researchers at Manchester College.
Poverty rates and income levels were examined from 1995-2005 for several groups in the US population.
As recently reported by the Census Bureau, the overall poverty rate appears to have leveled off in 2005 following an upward climb that began in 2001.
Comparisons of several demographic and income level groups reveal mixed trends. The difference in poverty rates between whites and other racial-ethnic groups decreased six of the last ten years. The poverty disparity between adults and children decreased seven of those same ten years, dropping 13 percent overall, but stabilizing in 2005. After narrowing each year since 1997, the gender-based poverty gap showed a large increase in 2005, widening to a level last seen in 2000. Though the gap closed seven of ten years, this recent increase resulted in there being no overall improvement since 1995.
Focusing on the most quickly narrowing gap, that for race, reveals that the effect is due principally to minority groups dropping in poverty rate, with white poverty remaining relatively stable. During this same time period the Black poverty rate dropped from 29.3% to 24.9%; Hispanics from 30.2% to 21.8%; and Asians/Pacific Islanders from 14.6% to 11.1%.
However, there is bad news on another front. Inequality in income between the richest and the poorest households has reached a modern-day high in 2005. According to statistician James Brumbaugh-Smith, “While the closing of some poverty gaps is encouraging, in 2005 the income gap between the top 5% and the bottom 10% was the widest observed since the Census Bureau began publishing such data in 1967. The 95th percentile income is now 14.7 times higher than income at the 10th percentile. This measure of inequality is 29 percent higher than first observed in 1967 and 14 percent higher than in 1995.”
Even the good news of the narrowing poverty gaps based on race and age is tempered by a closer look at the data. Non-whites are still 2.6 times more likely to live in poverty than whites. Similarly, despite the downward 1995-2005 trend in poverty disparity between adults and children, in 2005 children were still 1.6 times more likely to be poor than adults. Even more problematic is the poverty rate of children in minority households, 33.5 percent for Black households and 28.3 percent in Hispanic households. The poverty gap based on gender actually increased after a consistent seven-year decline. Females are now 27 percent more likely to be in poverty than males (up from 21 percent in 2004), returning to a disparity level not seen since 2000. For women and girls living in Black and Hispanic households the poverty rates are considerably higher, 26.9 and 23.9 percent respectively, compared to 14.1 percent overall.
“There is some hope for the future as some demographic gaps generally narrowed over the decade, but the gaps are still there,” says lead researcher Neil Wollman. “These poverty gaps are not good for a society that holds equality as one of its important values. Happiness is affected by the ways our values play out in the world and how we feel that we stack up next to our fellow citizens.”