Long and Short of Poverty Trends
There's good news and bad news for the Reagan administration in the poverty statistics for 1984, published Tuesday by the Census Bureau.</br></br>The good news is that after increasing steadily during the administration's first three years until the number of poor reached a post-1965 high, poverty has begun to decline. The economic recovery of 1983-84 brought greater prosperity to many of the poor as well as to most everyone else. As a result, about 1.8 million people moved above the poverty line. Moreover, the improvement was broad-based, with the black poor in particular showing significant gains. At least for the time being, this accomplishment should quiet those who have criticized "Reaganomics" as unfair to the less well-off.</br></br>The bad news is that even after a period of robust economic growth, the Reagan administration so far still has wound up with more people in poverty than at any time since 1966 (except, of course, for its own time in office). The nearly one-percentage-point reduction last year -- from 15.3% to 14.4% of the population -- is nothing to sneeze at. However, it's not unprecedented and is just about the same amount by which the poverty rolls had been rising annually. More improvement may yet come, but it will be increasingly difficult.</br></br>The reason is that many of the remaining poor fall into groups that have typically had above-average rates of poverty. In 1984, 35% lived in female-headed households; 10% were elderly; 20% fell into the category of "unrelated individuals," which includes widows living alone, lodgers and others without close ties to the rest of society.</br></br>These people are not unaffected by economic conditions. To the contrary, economic growth means increased earnings for those who work or higher welfare benefits for those, like the elderly, who do not. During 1984, the Census Bureau reported better incomes for each group.