What Is Poverty?

For most Americans, the word "poverty" sug*gests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shel*ter. For example, the "Poverty Pulse" poll taken by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development in 2005 asked the general public the question: "How would you describe being poor in the U.S.?" The overwhelming majority of responses focused on homelessness, hunger or not being able to eat prop*erly, and not being able to meet basic needs.[7]

But if poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the 37 million people identified as being "in poverty" by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor.[8] While material hardship does exist in the United States, it is quite restricted in scope and severity. The average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines.

Ownership of Property and Amenities among the Poor

Chart 1 shows the ownership of property and consumer durables among poor households. The data are taken from the American Housing Survey for 2005, conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Census Bureau, the Survey of Income and Program Partici*pation (SIPP) conducted by the Census Bureau, and the Residential Energy Consumption Survey con*ducted by the U.S. Department of Energy.[9]

As the chart shows, some 43 per*cent of poor households own their own home. The typical home owned by the poor is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths. It has a garage or carport and a porch or patio and is located on a half-acre lot. The house was constructed in 1969 and is in good repair. The median value of homes owned by poor households was $95,276 in 2005 or 70 percent of the median value of all homes owned in the United States.[10]

Some 73 percent of poor house*holds own a car or truck; nearly a third own two or more cars or trucks. Eighty percent have air conditioning; by contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the general U.S. population had air conditioning. Nearly nine in ten poor households own microwaves; more than a third have automatic dishwashers.

Poor households are well equipped with modern entertain*ment technology. It should come as no surprise that nearly all (97 per*cent) poor households have color TVs, but more than half actually own two or more color televisions. One-quarter own large-screen televisions, 78 percent have a VCR or DVD player, and almost two-thirds have cable or satellite TV reception. Some 58 percent own a stereo.

More than a third of poor house*holds have telephone answering machines. Roughly a third have both cell phones and conventional landline telephones. More than a third have per*sonal computers. While these numbers do not sug*gest lives of luxury, they are notably different from conventional images of poverty.



Housing Conditions

A similar disparity between popular concep*tions and reality applies to the housing conditions of the poor. Most poor Americans live in houses or apartments that are relatively spacious and in good repair. As Chart 2 shows, 49 percent of poor house*holds live in single-family homes, either unat*tached single dwellings or attached units such as townhouses. Another 41 percent live in apart*ments, and 10 percent live in mobile homes.[11]



Housing Space

Both the overall U.S. population and the poor in America live, in general, in very spacious housing. As Table 1 shows, 71 percent of all U.S. households have two or more rooms per tenant. Among the poor, this figure is 66 percent.

Crowding is quite rare; only 2.4 percent of all households and 5.6 percent of poor households are crowded with more than one person per room.[12] By contrast, social reformer Jacob Riis, writing on ten*ement living conditions around 1890 in New York City, described crowded families living with four or five persons per room and some 20 square feet of living space per person.[13]