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Stat house
Misc.
U. S. Census offers a poor profile
of American wealth
In September 1998, the Census Bureau provided a snapshot of the economic health of America as of 1996. It indicates a widening income gap between the richest and poorest Americans, largely stagnating household incomes and a million more people without health insurance.
More stats Capital punishment Environment Homelessness Welfare reform Our booming prisons Disappearing health care Refugees worldwide Misc. stats In 1996, the poverty line was $16,366 for a family of four and $12,516 for a family of three. That meant there were 36.5 million poor people, up 4.1 million from 1989 when recession hit and started the downward income trends. 1996's national poverty rate was 13.7 percent.
Children remain disproportionately represented among the poor. They make up 40 percent of that population but only 27 percent of the overall population.
The ranks of the very poor, defined as households with incomes less than half of the poverty line. Forty percent of all poor people, or 14.4 million people, live with incomes less than half of the poverty level—as against 13.9 million in 1995. But the poverty rate for African Americans fell to 28.4 percent from 29.3 percent in 1995.
The average earnings for the top 20 percent of American income earners rose 2.2 percent in 1996, while average income of families in the bottom 20 percent fell by 1.8 percent.
The overall earnings increase for Americans was $410 in household income [1.2 percent] to an average of $35,492. U.S. household incomes still have not made up what they lost from the 1989 recession. Real income is 1.3 percent below 1989. One group that exceeded its pre-recession level was married-couple households, who were up 2.2 percent compared with their 1989 level.
The number of Americans without health insurance is now 41.7 million. About 10.6 million of the uninsured were children.
The Bureau reported gains for women. Their median earnings, working full-time, rose 2.4 percent, to $23,710. This brings them up to 74 percent of men's earnings, which dropped in 0.9 percent to $32,144.
Miscellaneous
The average American parent shops six hours a week and spends 40 minutes a week playing with the kids.—Sojourners
Americans spent $482 billion on gambling in 1994; 8.5 percent of the nation's personal income.—Seducing America: Is gambling a good bet? by Rex Rogers
The United States is one of the richest nations in the world but ranks dead last (in percentage of GDP) among major Western donors of foreign aid.
In 1995, pizza sales in the United States were a record $31 billion--about five times the amound spent by the U.S. government on all international humanitarian and development assistance.—from Bread for the World, quoting Business Week and The Washington Post
Worldwide, 1.3 billion people live on less than $1 a day, about the cost of a slice of New York City pizza—Bread for the World
World Vision estimates that famine in North Korea may kill as much as 15 percent of the people in the North Korean countryside if emergency aid does not arrive in time. The hunger relief and development agency believes as many as 500,000 people may have already perished. World Vision admits that its estimate is based on anecdotal evidence. The final toll of this late-20th century famine could be much lower—or much higher.—from The New York Times