A survey done by the Associated Press shows that 80 percent of American adults struggle with what the Huffington Post calls “near-poverty” or reliance on welfare. The data indicated declining financial freedom and security. The survey indicated an increasingly global economy, as well as the income disparity widening. Of course, the flight of the manufacturers was shown to be a big player in that realm.
The Obama administration has put a new emphasis on jobs and job creation. President Obama’s recent speeches mentioned rebuilding ladders of opportunity and bringing jobs back home.
15 percent of the population is defined as poor, especially considering high unemployment rates. While blacks and hispanics have a poverty rate that is three times higher than whites, 41% of the nation’s poor are white. Demographers have termed these people “the invisible poor” since low income whites don’t get hyped in the media. These poor live in rural towns where sometimes 60 percent of people are poor. The localities are across the country. In Appalachia there is a concentration of poor as well as the industrial Midwest, and the heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma to the Great Plains.
The percentage of people in Buchanan County, Virginia, with a college degree is more than 90 percent. Yet the percentage of people impoverished there is around 24 percent. According to the Huffington Post, 99 percent of the poor in Buchanan County are white.
Several professors from Cornell, Oxford, and Penn State crunched information from the U.S. Census Bureau. One of the findings from the survey showed that the number of white single mother households living in poverty surpassed or equaled black ones. Also the survey showed that the poverty rate among working class whites has grown faster than among non-whites.
Another finding from the survey was that from the year 2000 till now there has been a 30 percent increase in the child population of whites living in high-poverty neighborhoods. A high-poverty neighborhood has a poverty rate of 30 percent of more. These children can be at a high risk for teen pregnancy or dropping out of school. Black children in high-poverty neighborhoods dropped as a percentage from 43 percent to 37 percent. The percentage of Latino children living in poverty increased by almost 3 percent.
According to the General Social Survey conducted by the University of Chicago, only 45 percent of people think their family will have a good chance at improving their economic position based on the current economic situation. As the economy imropoves, hopefully confidence will improve along with it.