Truck and Barter

Some people hace noted that the latest government report on income and poverty was recently released. It showed a slight uptick in poverty rates. However, I wanted to point out my favorite statistics from the report. This being rates for various levels of employment. If one were to listen to certain politicians, it would appear that there are a significant amount of working poor in this country. That is, there a lot of people working fulltime below the poverty level. Unfortunately for the pols, the stats don't bear this out.

Work Experience % in Poverty
All workers (16 years and older) . . 6.1
Worked full-time, year-round. . . . 2.8
Not full-time, year-round . . . . . . 12.8
Did not work at least one week . . . 21.7

So, for those working fulltime year round, the poverty rate is 2.8% while those who didn't work at all it is 21.7%. Of course, this doesn't include children as this is for individuals only above a certain age, but it strikes me that poverty is largely a jobs problem.

One additional note, for those who are socially conservative among our readers, here are the numbers for families:

Type of Family
Married couple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5
Female householder, no husband
present. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28.4
Male householder, no wife
present. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13.5

Maybe it really just takes a complete family and not a village.