Graphic: The New York Times / Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Can you be living on the edge of poverty if you earn more than $50,000 a year? Yes, you can ... if you live in Silicon Valley.

A new and very surprising analysis by The Census Bureau reveals that 100 million people - yes, one in three Americans - live either in poverty or just above it.

Jason DeParle, Robert Gebeloff, and Sabrina Tavernise of The New York Times wrote this intriguing article about America's "near poor":

They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by.

Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called “near poor” and sometimes simply overlooked — and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.

One worker profiled by The New York Times summarizes her situation with crystal clear clarity:

“Living paycheck to paycheck,” is how she describes her survival strategy. “One bad bill will wipe you out.”

Link

Unless you live under a rock, you'd know that government (and yes, even some insanely rich people like Warren Buffett) is calling for an increase in taxation for the rich in effort to save education, social programs, and so on.

You'd think that regular Joes, who makes nowhere near the proposed $250,000 a year threshold for increased taxes, wouldn't be opposed to such thing. After all, they're not being taxed. But many actually do. Why is that?

Economists have usually explained poor people’s counter-intuitive disdain for something that might make them better off by invoking income mobility. Joe the Plumber might not be making enough to be affected by proposed hikes in tax rates on those making more than $250,000 a year, they argue, but he hopes some day to be one of them.

In this theory, it makes sense that people who make $200,000 a year to be opposed to the increased taxation scheme, even if they aren't affected now. After all, $250,000 a year is a reachable goal, so they don't want to set themselves up to get taxed more if they earn more in the future.

But that theory also predicts that the wider the income gap, the more supportive people would be to government efforts to boost their incomes. Someone who makes $15,000 a year would presumably be so far down the ladder that he or she couldn't care if the wealthy got taxed more.

So, you'd think that poor people would be the first in line to defend income redistribution programs (or socialistic hand outs, depending where you are on the political spectrum), but you'd actually be wrong.

Here's the surprising result of an economic study that poor people are actually the most vociferously opposed to programs that increase their own income if such action also help those poorer than themselves:

Instead of opposing redistribution because people expect to make it to the top of the economic ladder, the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like to be at the bottom. One paradoxical consequence of this “last-place aversion” is that some poor people may be vociferously opposed to the kinds of policies that would actually raise their own income a bit but that might also push those who are poorer than them into comparable or higher positions. The authors ran a series of experiments where students were randomly allotted sums of money, separated by $1, and informed about the “income distribution” that resulted. They were then given another $2, which they could give either to the person directly above or below them in the distribution.

In keeping with the notion of “last-place aversion”, the people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them: rewarding the “rich” but ensuring that someone remained poorer than themselves. Those not at risk of becoming the poorest did not seem to mind falling a notch in the distribution of income nearly as much. This idea is backed up by survey data from America collected by Pew, a polling company: those who earned just a bit more than the minimum wage were the most resistant to increasing it.

Poverty may be miserable. But being able to feel a bit better-off than someone else makes it a bit more bearable.

Read more at The Economist: Link

Photographer Horace Warner took hundreds of pictures of street urchins in the East End neighborhood of Spitalfields in 1912. At the time, it was one of London’s harshest slum areas, but has been gentrified in the past few decades. These photographs are a peek into the world that inspired Charles Dickens.

Little is known of Horace Warner and nothing is known of his relationship to the nippers. Only thirty of these pictures survive, out of two hundred and forty that he took, tantalising the viewer today as rare visions of the lost tribe of Spitalfields Nippers. They make look like paupers, and the original usage of them to accompany the annual reports of the charitable Bedford Institute, Quaker St, Spitalfields, may have been as illustrations of poverty – but that is not the sum total of these beguiling photographs, because they exist as spirited images of something much more subtle and compelling, the elusive drama of childhood itself.

Link -via Nag on the Lake

In one experiment in particular, led by doctoral student, Paul Piff and his researchers, participants completed a questionnaire reporting their socioeconomic status  and a few days later were provided with $10 to share anonymously. The findings concluded the more generous of the income brackets were on the lower-income scale. A recent national survey
reiterates the results, revealing lower-income people give more of their hard-earned money to charity than the wealthy.

At a time when the richest one percent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 percent combined, Piff and his colleagues’ findings are more than a little timely. “Our data suggests that an ironic and self-perpetuating dynamic may in part explain this trend,” the study researchers write, to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “Whereas lower-class individuals may give more of their resources away, upper-class individuals may tend to preserve and hold onto their wealth. This differential pattern of giving versus saving among upper–and lower– class people could serve to exacerbate economic inequality in society.”

Did anyone else think, “duh!” when they read the last line of that quote? Link -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Kathryn Harper)

There is no reason to view the poor as stupid or in any way different from anyone else, says Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in the UK. All of us are simply human beings, making the best of the hand life has dealt us. If we understand this, it won’t just change the way we view the lives of the poorest in society, it will also show how misguided many current efforts to tackle society’s problems are – and it will suggest better solutions.

Evolutionary theory predicts that if you are a mammal growing up in a harsh, unpredictable environment where you are susceptible to disease and might die young, then you should follow a "fast" reproductive strategy – grow up quickly, and have offspring early and close together so you can ensure leaving some viable progeny before you become ill or die. For a range of animal species there is evidence that this does happen. Now research suggests that humans are no exception.

Certainly the theory holds up in comparisons between people in rich and poor countries. Bobbi Low and her colleagues at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor compared information from nations across the world to see if the age at which women have children changes according to their life expectancy (Cross-Cultural Research, vol 42, p 201). "We found that the human data fit the general mammalian pattern," says Low. "The shorter life expectancy was, the earlier women had their first child."

Link

If you’ve seen Neill Blomkamp’s movie District 9, the tin house above should be familiar. Indeed, the slum that housed the alien prawns is similar to the Gamalake township in South Africa, down to its purported "temporary" nature.

John Gore of 360 Cities wrote:

“This is a typical Tin House after which this area of Gamalakhe township got its name: Tin Town. Originally erected as temporary housing for these displaced people, these tin houses have become permanent residences for over 20 years. This home owner has been fortunate enough to now have a brick house as well, but the old tin structure is still used as a residency.”

The poverty is palpable – the spartan house has bare walls and floor, and as far as I can tell, open windows (no glass panes). Yet, it’s not completely devoid of technology though the choice of what appliance to have is strikingly logical: a refrigerator. (Compare this to the poor in United States where 91% own color TVs!)

Misery loves company, so this should make you feel as if you aren’t alone. -via the Presurfer

Here’s an all-star cast of comedians – John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Marty Feldman – lampooning the stereotypical "rich
people claiming they were happier when they were poor."

The skit was written for the British television program "At Last the 1948 Show; it has subsequently been reprised by the Monty Python crew (with subtitles for those who have difficulty understanding British English) and by other groups of comedians.  The script is available here.

– via nerve

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.

Well, according to a new study by pediatrician Dr. Ulfat Shaikh at UC Davis School of Medicine, health doesn’t have much to do with why kids take vitamins … but poverty does:

Researchers derived the information from an analysis of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey results from 1999 to 2004. They found that about one-third of American children ages 2 to 17 had used a vitamin or mineral supplement within the previous month, but that most of them did not need to supplement their diet.

On the other hand, children who used vitamins the least tended to be at greatest risk for nutritional deficits. They did not eat as well as the children who were taking supplements, lived in low-income families that were short of food and had less access to health care, the study found.

“Poverty seems to be the overriding factor,” Dr. Shaikh said. Although supplements may not seem expensive to a middle-class family, the cost may be onerous for a low-income family, she said. “Parents who were poor were perhaps unable to afford supplements.”

Link

A heart breaking look at the slums of the world.  For all of us who complain about our lives, and how poor we are.....just take a look. I guarantee you'll never think of yourself as poor again.

The Venezuelan capital is located in a valley, with commercial districts and well-heeled residential areas near the valley floor. But look upward in any direction, and you will see shantytowns built into the steep hillside.

The population of Caracas has more than quadrupled in the last 50 years, fueled in part by Venezuela's recent oil boom. Despite President Hugo Chavez's populist platform, and even though Venezuela holds South America's largest oil reserves, about 50 percent of Caraquenos live in poor neighborhoods known as barrios. These neighborhoods lack access to basic municipal services such as waste collection, regular mail delivery, sewage system, and legal electric connections.

The barrios also face a serious security issue. According to UNESCO, firearms kill more people in Venezuela than in any other country not at war. In 2007, the annual tally approached 12,000 murders countrywide. In the tattered social fabric of Caracas and its barrios, internecine gang warfare, robbery, and other violent crime produce 100 homicides a week.

Link - via boingboing

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by amdela.