Poverty in Richest Country?

Is it the bane of human society or the inevitable law of nature that irrespective of what system man had improvised so far, the humanity is destined to live with irreversible income and intellect disparities for the ages to come? How does one comprehend otherwise that despite the golden mix of capitalism and democracy ruling the richest nation viz. the USA the government there can’t abolish poverty of its citizens in the last two centuries? It is indeed one of the inexplicable developments with the Census Bureau reporting that the percentage of Americans struggling below the poverty line in 2009 was the highest it has been in 15 years. The number of people living in poverty last year climbed to almost 43.6 million up from 39.8 million in 2008. The percentage of people living in poverty also increased to 14.3 per cent, the highest rate since 1994. Poverty in USA has been defined as pretax cash income below $ 22000 for a family of four. This is a development which one notices in spite of federal assistance like expanded unemployment benefits (helping three million families).

An unexpected development but a welcome one from the stand point of joint family system in US society is the necessity of younger generations along with other members of nuclear families to shift to the homes of their parents to tide over the poverty situation for the present. The Census study found an 11.6 per cent increase in the number of such multifamily households over the last two years. Unemployment remains near 10 per cent and there are strong signs that the high poverty numbers have continued into 2010. Poverty had been concentrated among young adults without college education and their children.
One indirect sign of continuing hardship is the rise in food stamp recipients, who now include one in seven adults and an even greater share of the nation’ children. By mid-2010 the number of recipients had reached 41.3 million, compared with 39 million at the beginning of the year. Food banks too report swelling demand.

The poverty rate for non-Hispanic whites was 9.4 per cent, for blacks 25.8 percent, and for Hispanics 25.3 percent. The rate for Asians was unchanged at 12.5 percent. “This is the first time in memory that an entire decade has produced essentially no economic growth for the typical America household”, Mr. Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard. The poverty line is no doubt a flawed measure, experts agree.