Individualism and the media encourage a myopic view of life. Many wear blinders, oblivious to what the rest of the world experiences. Poverty in the United States is quite different from poverty around the world. A careful look at what poverty means in the US can help one live with gratitude.
First, it is important to know that the poverty line in the US is defined by whatever government bureaucrats in Washington DC say it is. It is an arbitrary definition, but once they have set that arbitrary definition, we can examine what it means in concrete terms for people who live below it. To see the big picture, we should look at how the US poor compare to those in other countries. One scholar of Latin America pointed out that the poor in the US lived at a level similar to the upper middle class of Mexico. As another example, an American living below the poverty line has more housing space in terms of square footage than the average European. This is not a comparison of poor Europeans to poor Americans, but a comparison of poor Americans with average Europeans.
While those living in poverty in the US do have real problems, a lack of material goods and food are not the biggest issue. When the CDC studied diseases of poverty in the US, obesity was more common amongst those living in poverty. As far as possessions go, the US poor are better off than many around the world. They are even better off than Americans 40 years ago:
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.
Another factor to keep in mind is that many people who live below the poverty line become wealthier as they work longer and gain experience in the job market. Most people do not remain at the same annual income for their entire lifetime.
Thus far, we have focused on the concrete realities of life below the poverty line. The poverty line is an arbitrary definition and does not tell us what real people have in terms of possessions or housing space. But even if we look at incomes, Americans do not have a good sense of how high their income is compared to the rest of the world. Researchers, including the former lead economist of the World Bank Research Department, have shown that most Americans believe the average income globally is $20,000 but it is in fact only $2,100. This means that Americans underestimate how wealthy fellow Americans are compared with others around the world.
The above information does not mean that Americans living below the official poverty line have no problems. They often experience family break down leading to drug use and crime within their communities, but it is not the lack of food or material possessions that drive these problems. In fact if one looks for the root causes of these issues, it is possible to see that all of these problems became more prominent as Democrats and their policies gained ascendancy, political and cultural, in the 1960’s.
Based on information in:
Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell
Wealth, Poverty and Politics by Thomas Sowell
Gautam Nair, “Most Americans Vastly Underestimate How Rich They Are Compared with the Rest of the World. Does It Matter?,” The Washington Post, August 23, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/08/23/most-americans-vastly-underestimate-how-rich-they-are-compared-with-the-rest-of-the-world-does-it-matter
