- The analysis showed that median poor households most frequently had the following 14 items: air conditioning, a clothes washer, a clothes dryer, ceiling fans, and a cordless phone.
- For entertainment, these households had two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR.
- In the kitchen, these poor households had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, a microwave, and a coffee maker.
These items may then be considered representative of the living standards of the median or typical poor U.S. household in 2005.
In contemporary America, poverty is not so much a material condition as a spiritual one, often characterized by drug abuse, alcoholism, mental illness and illegitimacy. Until voters have a better understanding of what today’s poverty is and is not, it will not be possible to craft effective solutions to the very real problems–mostly behavioral–that afflict a significant portion of our population.
Go read the whole report.
26872
