According To the Census, $11,000 a Year Isn't Poor

The U.S. Census recently released new data about the number of Americans living in poverty. The results, while expected, certainly are frightening. According to the graphic, a little over 14% of our nation's population is living at, or below the poverty line. This is the highest percentage poor in 15 years.

According a New York Times report, one in five children are living in poverty. And while the report provides some interesting details about the impact of unemployment and the recession on our country, it still seems, to me at least, to be incomplete.

The poverty line for a family of four is $22,050. While for a single adult, the poverty line is $10,830, before taxes. And while the 14% of people living below this line is heartbreaking, I think that the line is not accurate. For a single adult, $11,000 is less than $1,000 a month. Although, according to the data, this is above the poverty line, there is no way that someone could actually live on that. The rent on a simple studio apartment in a typical community is at least $500 a month. That is half the before tax income, leaving less than $100 a week to spend on things like food, utilities, transportation, heath insurance and other needs. If you can't support yourself, then how can you be considered to be “not poor”.

I think that if we want to get a more accurate look at the rate of poverty in our country, we are going to have to rethink the poverty line. Even for a family of four making $23,000 a year before taxes, while not technically living in poverty, they are still not able to live on that wage. A two bedroom apartment in a safe area is generally $800-1000 a month. When you are making a little less than $2,000 a month, with two kids to feed, it is practically impossible.

So, I say, lets take a look at the real poverty line, and the numbers might be even more shocking. There are many families out there that are having to live with their families just to be able to make ends meet, and while they are “not poor”, they certainly feel like it. Not to mention the “not poor” people who don't have family to share housing with. For them, not only is it difficult to afford rent, they can't qualify to rent from most apartment complexes if the rent is more than three times their income. So they are forced to pay more for housing in bad areas or from long term hotels, where it becomes even harder to save money because they are spending an even higher percentage of their income just on housing alone.

Maybe if we counted all the poor, the numbers would be shocking enough to do something about.

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By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.