Identify the common characteristics of America's poor and briefly describe each of them.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary. Both historically and currently,the poor share some common characteristics that include age, gender, family structure, race, and ethnicity.Children under age 18 make up only 23 percent of the U.S. population, but 34 percent (almost 15 million) of the poor, up from a low of 16 percent in 2001. Americans aged 65 and older make up about 15 percent of the total population, but 9 percent (4.2 million) of the poor. The poverty rate of older Americans is at an all-time low, and lower than that of any other age group, because government programs, particularly Medicare and Medicaid, have generally kept up with the rate of inflation. In contrast, many programs for poor children have been reduced or eliminated since 1980.Women's poverty rates are higher than men's, but family structure is an important factor. The term feminization of poverty refers to the disproportionate number of the poor who are women. Because of increases in divorce, nonmarital childbearing, and low-paying jobs, single-mother families are four to five times more likely to be poor than married-couple families that have two wage earners, and more likely to be extremely poor over many years.In absolute numbers, there are more poor whites than poor Latinos, blacks, or Asians. Proportionately, however, whites and Asian Americans are less likely to be poor than other racial-ethnic groups. Increasingly, education separates the poor from the non-poor. In 2015, just 5 percent of college graduates were poor, compared with 13 percent of high school graduates and 26 percent of those without a high school diploma. The more risk factors, the more likely that someone will experience poverty. For example, being a young, black, unmarried female with young children and little education increases the odds of both poverty and extreme poverty (living below the bottom 10 percent of the income distribution).