US Poverty Rates Improve?
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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
The New York Times reports today that according to the Census Bureau, US income and poverty rates improved in 2006--though the only bits of good news I found in the piece were that poverty among the elderly is relatively low and that poverty rates for Hispanic Americans fell to 20.6 percent (which doesn't seem acceptable anyway). Poverty rates for white, black and Asian Americans were statistically unchanged.
Other highlights:
- median household income rose slightly, but only for white people. Rising incomes were a "reflection of more family members taking jobs to make ends meet," not of people getting paid better wages
- more adults lack health insurance than in 2005
- 700,000 more children lack health insurance than in 2005
Great. Really seems like an improvement.
!
That's, er, a pretty large number. I'd be very, very interested to hear what caused 700,000 kids to lose health insurance in the span of a year.
This post is clearly meant to poke at the unsatisfactory state of our health care system. That's great and all, but to fix our health care system, understanding the causal relationships within it is probably important.
Unless 700,000 kids really *did* lose their health care last year, my first suspicion is that something changed with how the figure is reported?
But, deep down, most of us, being very human and caring and forgiving, and AMERICAN, even when we know that they aren't, we can't help but to feel sorry for our right-"clipped"-winged brothers. You know, if only they'd stop the non-sense politics of "vote for me because I'm morally superior to everyone else, and get down to some meaningful politics, maybe... just maybe, we can get back on the road to being the great nation that the creator wants and NEEDs us to be. And stand up again, TOGETHER, instead of separate, AS A NATION, and be real, legitimate, bona fide LEADERs in the world. These guy, as right as they are, are what's really WRONG with this country. Can't we all just get back to being GREAT AGAIN. You remember how we used to be, don't you?!? You know, honestly, if you take a good look around... there are a lot of other nations of smart people around the world that are watching the sadness that has become America, and wondering how we got to be so powerful, yet so stupid. The answer is... we used to be smarter, and that lead to our being powerful. Now we're not as smart. but we still have the power...For Now. In many other parts of the world, they look at us and think... maybe it's time they wrestle the power away from us and took control of the direction of this planet. No doubt, in our current state of stupidity we have lost our ability to lead ourselves and the repect of the rest of the world as far as our ability to lead them. All because we've decided that is more fun to stay at home and fight amongst each ourselves... You know...the big ole country western, yahoo, good ole boy, hold our own women back, erradicate the Red man, and hate the Yellow man, hold the Blacks back and run the Mexicans out, trailer trash, tabaco chewing, red neck, anti-Americans. Well, just Remember... the next time you stupidly and arrogantly look in the mirror shaking your head wondering... "what the hell happened to my great country?" Just remember..."A house divided can NOT stand!" These word are but a few wise words that came to us during a time when we were smart eough to hear them.
I think it's unlikely that the Bureau changed its data collection methods significantly between 2005 and 2006. After going through the Census report itself (Link ), there's no indication that reporting changed. There's some variability in the way people respond (see page 26 for details on that), but if there was a statistical explanation for why that data changed, the Bureau would give it.
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