Research: Poverty more common than most Americans realize

Many Americans view the poor as a permanent underclass of slackers who dodge work and skate through life on the taxpayer's dime.

But recent research shows the poor are anything but monolithic. And poverty is a lot more common experience than people think.

More than 40 percent of Americans between ages 25 and 60 will be poor for at least a year, said Mark Rank, a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis.

"It's not that people aren't working hard or trying," Rank said. "But the reach of poverty is really wide."

More surprising, Rank said, is that nearly 80 percent of the U.S. population ages 25 to 60 will have, at some point in their lives, used a public-assistance program, lived in a home where the head of household has been unemployed at some time during the year, or lived in poverty or near-poverty, often defined as 150 percent of the federal poverty level. (The poverty level for a family of three is $19,530; 150 percent of the poverty level is $29,295.)

And, Rank said, half of all American children will live in a household that uses food stamps at some time in their lives.

"We say in this country if you don't make it, there's something wrong with you," Rank said. "But this research shows that poverty is much more of a structural, not a personal, issue. Over their lifetimes, people have things happen to them that they didn't anticipate: divorce, unemployment, health issues."

And rather than living in a permanent state of deprivation, many people are moving in and out of poverty, depending on shifting life circumstances, Rank said.

Eric Burke can relate.

An unemployed salesman from Aston, Delaware County, Burke, 28, is married with three children and a fourth on the way.

He was making nearly $50,000 a year selling cars at a dealership in Conshohocken when his wife fell ill and he had to take a leave of absence to help care for the children. Now, he's having a hard time finding work.

"I just wanted to be there for my kids," said Burke. "It never entered my mind I could end up struggling this much."

Many people experience what Pastor Tricia Neale of St. John's Lutheran Church in Mayfair calls a "flash moment in their lives."

Regardless of planning, people can find themselves suddenly without enough food, said Neale, who runs the Feast of Justice food pantry at her church.

"So much laying off and downsizing has new people signing up with us - eight to 10 new families a week," she said.

Interestingly, Neale added, although the flow of new people to the pantry is constant, overall yearly numbers there remain roughly the same. That's because people are leaving the pantry's rank of clients at a rapid pace, as well.

"That means," Neale said, "the way people live is they find themselves in trouble for four months or so, then get back on their feet."

Soon afterward, in so many cases, trouble returns. It's part of a harsh cycle routing people through poverty and near-poverty for years, like a mill wheel that rises out of the water only to plunge beneath it again.

That's what happened to Claire Voira, 53, a waitress and single mother from Maple Shade.

After a divorce, she had to find a job as a waitress, where she makes a little more than $15,000 annually. That thrusts Voira and her 18-year-old daughter just below the poverty level.

The two share a room for $125 a week in someone's house.

Willing to grow, Voira got a real estate license but has had difficulty breaking into the business.

"It's not like I'm not trying to improve my life," she said. "I'm the perfect example of why it's not true that poor people are all one kind of people or other."

Perhaps, suggested Diane Riley, director of advocacy for the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, it's time to "stop blaming the poor for poverty."

Knowing how widespread poverty really is allows for the notion that forces are at work beyond the scope of the individual, Riley added.

To help the poor, she said, "we as a society must either pay people enough if they're working, or improve public-assistance programs to fill in the gaps.

"We have to have that conversation."

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