Jul 28 2008
Sheila Jackson-Lee (co-sponsor): Obligation of U.S. to Improve Lives of 36,950,000 Americans
4. H.CON.RES.19 :
Affirming the sense of Congress regarding the obligation of the United States to improve the lives of the 36,950,000 Americans living in poverty and the 15,928,000 of those who live in extreme poverty. Sponsor: Rep Lee, Barbara [CA-9]
(introduced 1/9/2007)
Cosponsors (25)
Committees: House Oversight and Government Reform
Latest Major Action: 1/9/2007 Referred to House committee. Status:
Referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Thirty-four percent of Americans say they belong to the “have-nots.” Twenty years ago, only 17 percent of Americans defined themselves this way. What happened? …Take a look at the lot of the “have-nots.” By virtually any criterion, Americans, even poor ones, live considerably better lives than they did even a decade or two ago. In 1995, 66 percent of poor households had air conditioning. Just 10 years later, in 2005, 80 percent of the poor had air conditioning at home. In 1995, 70 percent of poor households owned a car, and 27 percent owned two or more cars. By 2005, almost 75 percent owned cars, and 31 percent owned two or more. About 25 percent of the poor owned an automatic dishwasher in 1995. In 2005, more than 33 percent have a dishwasher. Microwave ownership jumped from 64 percent in 1995 to 89 percent by 2005.
The lowest-income one-fifth of households spend, per person, as much today as the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation writes, “Most of America’s ‘poor’ live in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or well-off just a few generations ago.”
Another wild card in income statistics is that many such statistics are about households or families — whose sizes vary over time, vary between one racial or ethnic group and another, and vary between one income bracket and another.
That is why household or family income can remain virtually unchanged for decades while per capita income is going up by very large amounts. The number of people per household and per family is declining.
Differences in the number of people per household from one ethnic group to another is why Hispanics have higher household incomes than blacks, while blacks have higher individual incomes than Hispanics.
