Poverty Line

Nearly 8 million Americans go to work every day yet still live below the poverty line. That is in part because the federal minimum wage is too low. Currently, an individual with a full-time job at the minimum wage and a family of three to support will fall below the federal poverty line. These workers, despite putting in regular hours, are struggling to provide basic necessities for themselves and their families. By allowing the minimum wage to remain at a nearly unlivable level, we have deemed certain jobs not worthy enough to meet even our country's minimum standard of living.

Nearly 8 million Americans go to work every day yet still live below the poverty line. That is in part because the federal minimum wage is too low. Currently, an individual with a full-time job at the minimum wage and a family of three to support will fall below the federal poverty line. These workers, despite putting in regular hours, are struggling to provide basic necessities for themselves and their families. By allowing the minimum wage to remain at a nearly unlivable level, we have deemed certain jobs not worthy enough to meet even our country's minimum standard of living.

The recession and longer-term economic troubles have pushed the nation's poverty rate to levels not seen in more than a decade, wiping out gains in the long-running War on Poverty and adding more financial strain to the lives of millions of Americans. New Census Bureau data, released Thursday, also showed that the face of the poor has changed. Those falling below the poverty line today are more likely to be full-time workers who cannot earn enough to meet their needs or middle-class workers driven into the ranks of the poor by lost jobs or shrinking incomes.

Tuesday's election marks the first time voters in the newly drawn 9th and 13th City Council districts will cast their ballots. I thought it would be interesting to look at the demographics of the two. In the 13th, which stretches from Hollywood to Silver Lake and Echo Park and down through Koreatown, 12 candidates are vying for a chance to represent a district that is 55% Latino, 22% non-Hispanic white, 18% Asian/Pacific Islander and 3% percent African...

More than 10 million people in China have been lifted above the poverty line since 1981, but another 60 million still earn less than $40 a year, the official China Daily newspaper said Tuesday, quoting scientists reporting at the first national Symposium on the Economic and Cultural Development of Impoverished Areas.

Everyone knows living in California isn't cheap. But a new report casts a light on how challenging it is to afford basic necessities -- and how inadequate a minimum-wage job is to meet those needs. A person working full-time for the state's minimum wage of $7.50 an hour earns $15,600 annually.

Five million American children under the age of 6--almost one out of every four in the nation--recently have been in families living below the poverty line, according to a report by the National Center for Children in Poverty, which is affiliated with Columbia University in New York. This makes young children the poorest of any age group in American society, with 23%--more than double the number of adults--living in poverty, the report said.

Mollie Orshansky, 91, an economist and statistician who created a basic formula for calculating the poverty line that was adopted by the U.S. government, died Dec. 18 of cardiopulmonary arrest, the New York Times reported. The family postponed announcing the death because of concerns over a long-running legal dispute involving Orshansky's estate, the Times reported.

Lomas de Chapultepec, a neighborhood of huge homes behind high stone and brick walls, wakes up each morning to the sound of sweeping. As the dawn's dark fades to light, servants emerge from behind gates and, with witches' brooms, brush away the leaves and twigs and lavender jacaranda petals that have fallen overnight. Maids in pastel uniforms, security guards, gardeners and chauffeurs — these are the public denizens of this super-rich enclave. The actual homeowners and permanent residents are rarely seen.

Donny Ashley misses the days when he was just barely poor. Sure, he commuted more than three hours each day to work as an electrical apprentice, but the paycheck ? about $575 a week ? put his family of four over the federal poverty threshold. But then the economy turned, and he lost his job. His wife managed to get work as a nurse but lost that job about a month ago. Now, having burned through their savings, the Watts family has gone from barely poor to officially poor. "It's not a good feeling to be, not necessarily above the poverty line, but somewhat, almost having your head above water where you can breathe.

Re "Raising the wage floor," Business, Feb. 14 In answer to all who proclaim that raising the minimum wage will devastate small business, I am about to enter my 83rd turn around the sun and have seen it raised more than a few times. Much breast-beating and bellowing about imminent disaster always follows but never happens. Somehow, our economy has and will continue to absorb such modest efforts, admittedly never sufficient for those earning it to live on but somehow enough to mollify the left and infuriate the right.

Telana Starks was watching her niece play in a sandbox Monday afternoon in Lafayette Park when I asked if she was following the presidential campaign. She said she hadn't really been paying any attention, which was interesting because the candidates haven't been paying any attention to her either. Starks makes about $700 a month as a home healthcare provider and would like to find time for another job and money for college, but she's busy looking after family who need her help. Kathleen O'Malley, whose granddaughter was playing with Starks' niece, said she's working as a dog walker to supplement her Social Security check.

During the election cycle we tend to ask: What does America mean; where are we going? And then someone decides to check on the Indians to find out the answer, as though Indians represent America's soul hidden in the attic. And of course politicians have long stood next to their "souls" and posed for pictures on the campaign trail. Within the last year, Diane Sawyer and "20/20" did a special on the sorry conditions at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and the New Yorker featured a grim photo essay on Pine Ridge too. The New York Times published a piece on brutal crime at the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and another on the deep financial problems at Foxwoods, the Pequot-owned "world's largest" casino in Connecticut.

Massachusetts, you're out. Ohio? Sorry, another loser. In the race for cultural mecca, the winner is: Oregon. That is, Oregon is the winner as far as "The Simpsons” are concerned, according to creator Matt Groening, who told Smithsonian magazine that the real-life home of his fictional characters is the Springfield in the Northwest. It was the first time that Groening had specified the place where almost anything can happen - and seemingly has in the show's 22 years on TV. Groening acknowledged that he has always avoided naming the state.

More than 49 million Americans live in poverty, an increase from previous counts that reflects heavy medical expenses for older people and high housing costs in Western states, especially California, according to new estimates announced Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The estimates, produced by a first-ever experimental recalibration of the federal model of hardship, adds 2.5 million people to the 46.6 million included in the official poverty count for 2010 released in September.

Poor policies Re "U.S. poverty totals hit a 50-year high," Sept. 14 Poverty in the United States hits a 50-year high, children are homeless, our educational system is deteriorating and our healthcare is expensive. All this has become possible because power and greed are now the norm. Would it be too much to ask for a CEO to take home a little less pay so he would not have to lay off workers? Would it be too much to ask wealthy individuals and corporations to pay more in taxes?

Heterosexuals living below the poverty line in U.S. cities are five times as likely as the nation's general population to be HIV-positive, regardless of their race or ethnicity, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. Their neighbors in the impoverished communities who live above the poverty line are 2.5 times as likely to be infected, according to the first comprehensive study of groups that aren't involved in risky behaviors. Because African Americans are 4.5 times as likely as whites to live in poverty and Latinos are four times as likely to do so, the findings could account for many of the ethnic and racial disparities in human immunodeficiency virus infections in this country, said Dr. Paul Denning, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC. Denning was the lead author of the study, which was released in Vienna at the International AIDS Conference.

In a grim portrait of a nation in economic turmoil, the government reported that the number of people living in poverty last year surged to 46.2 million — the most in at least half a century — as 1 million more Americans went without health insurance and household incomes fell sharply. The poverty rate for all Americans rose in 2010 for the third consecutive year, matching the 15.1% figure in 1993 and pushing many more young adults to double up or return to their parents' home to avoid joining the ranks of the poor.

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that almost 1 in 6 Americans was living below the federal poverty line in 2010, the highest percentage since 1993 and the largest number in at least five decades. The same day, the head of the Congressional Budget Office told a newly created deficit-reduction committee that the federal government couldn't sustain the services it had been providing for decades without major reductions in other spending, significant increases in taxes or both. As distressing as those presentations were, they merely reinforced what is already common knowledge: The economy is in terrible shape, and the federal government can't afford to do much to help.

In a grim portrait of a nation in economic turmoil, the government reported that the number of people living in poverty last year surged to 46.2 million — the most in at least half a century — as 1 million more Americans went without health insurance and household incomes fell sharply. The poverty rate for all Americans rose in 2010 for the third consecutive year, matching the 15.1% figure in 1993 and pushing many more young adults to double up or return to their parents' home to avoid joining the ranks of the poor.