Poverty In The United States
Brand, H.
One fourth of the American people is poor or lives at the margin of poverty. The poverty from which they suffer is not a "case" problem, amenable to solution by social work, nor does it...
...Thus, in autos, production decreased by 6.3% between May 1950 and May 1959, but jobs by 11.1...
...In 1959, when the national product rose to another record, it ran to over 14.4 weeks...
...Looking at the absolute dollar increases in the fourth column of Table II, we note that, while the average rise in family income was $1,581, the lowest group's income rose by less than one-fourth of that amount, and that the gains of 607 of all U.S...
...Department of Labor, February, March and April 1959 and 1960...
...In Michigan the unemployment rate during the 1957-58 recession was over twice that for the country as a whole...
...If one says that the family just described is not impoverished, that its living standard is adequate, this amounts to saying that the wife should work as well as the husband in order to support the family...
...spending units had less than $1,000 in such assets, and 56% had less than $500.45 Thus, the duration of unemployment becomes a critical factor for the maintenance of expenditures above poverty levels...
...Their low-income status is closely associated with relatively low educational attainment—they often have less than 8 years of elementary school...
...Changes in military technology have had profound employment effects...
...And these lacked seniority rights at their new jobs, a fact which often subjected them to renewed unemployment later.—H...
...22 GENERALLY, THE CHIEF VICTIMS of regional income inequalities are either farming people or unskilled workers...
...s The average work week in the U.S...
...Theoretically, their coverage could be extended and benefits raised so as to banish poverty altogether...
...The economic base of the most recent migrants is in large measure in trade, the service industries and in light manufacturing...
...The great majority of the aged do not have incomes even approaching the modest figure quoted above...
...However, poverty cannot be viewed as an ethnic problem, much as it may be the problem of ethnic minorities...
...The automotive industry] will spread all over the nation, emphasizing automation, prefabricated parts, the use of modular systems of part substitutes and measurements...
...families having but one earner ran to only $4,670, while it took two earners for median family income to amount to $5,880, and three or more for income to reach $7,200...
...But these solutions do not touch upon the basic nature of the problem...
...Computations are the writer's...
...Unemployment rose to postwar records during the 1957-58 recession...
...Per capita income in the Southeast was about $1,000 below that of the Atlantic states in 1958...
...has declined from around 60 hours in 1890 to about 40 at present...
...Incomes in trade and the services therefore are relatively low...
...30 During the fifties, the labor force grew by about 730,000 persons a year...
...To be sure, many social security recipients have additional incomes but, according to estimates of the Social Security Administration, one-fourth of them depend entirely on their benefits...
...We must soon find a substitute for that economic activity...
...and Statistical Abstract of the U.S...
...9 Social Security Bulletin, a publication of the U.S...
...by 1956, a year of unprecedented business activity, it had risen to 11.3 weeks...
...are so fantastic that there is strong indication that within five years industry will be able to handle what is now considered highly advanced work with semiskilled operators...
...person 50.3% 5,408 $1,500 2 persons 23.6 6,725 2,000 3 16.2 4,658 2,500 4 14.7 5,328 3,000 5 19.2 5,524 3,500 6 29.5 5,122 4,000 7 " and more 49.6 9,420 4,500 Total 42,184 According to Table III, in 1958, 42.2 million persons, or close to 25% of the noninstitutional population of the U.S., had incomes falling not only below official standards of adequacy but below our arbitrarily set minimum standards as well.' 8 (Naturally, the lower the standards are set, the lower the number of persons who are considered poor, and vice versa...
...On the other hand, the reduction of rural poverty is conditioned in part on the extent to which migrants can find employment elsewhere...
...Let us go into some of these matters a bit...
...Close to 45 million persons, then, or about 26% of the U.S...
...26 "Rural Low Income and Rural Development Programs in the South," Report of the National Planning Association, reprinted in Hearings before the Subcommittee No...
...Political pressures to assure at least a subsistence income to that majority of the aged who must still live on less are too strong to be resisted very long...
...To discuss them, we shall have to refer to different sets of data...
...Basic needs refer to the BLS's City Worker's Family Budget...
...This greater harshness is in large part related to the consistent lowering of rates of employer contributions, from a 48-state average of 2.757 of total payrolls in 1940 to one of 1.31% in 1957...
...This, of course, unfavorably affects the conditions of all Negroes, and aggravates the indignities they suffer...
...It would seem gratuitous to end this article on a hortatory note...
...We referred above to 11 million children who live with low-income families...
...However, close to half of all white-collar jobs (or 13.6 million) are in the clerical and sales categories, where educational requirements and skills are considerably less lofty...
...837...
...However, unlike the rural migrant who has the prospect of improving his situation, the already industrialized worker, who has acquired a skill, experience and a modest education, often faces downgrading when he suffers permanent job loss in his line (i.e., when his layoff is not merely cyclically conditioned...
...Local industrialization, which would be a basic solution for rural poverty, has lagged, in large measure because...
...First, as we have seen, the duration of unemployment has " Peak or trough refers to the Federal Reserve Board's Index of Industrial Production...
...38 1959 Survey of Consumer Finances, op...
...Productivity in these industries tends, in general, to be low and, except in public and private administration (from which the new migrants are, because of inadequate education and racial discrimination, largely excluded), is rising but slowly...
...Granted that conditions of work have changed fundamentally, many American families still must put in a 60-hour work week to live adequately, if wives' working hours are added to husbands...
...Advancement opportunities are limited, partly because of the small-firm structure of these sectors, partly because of prejudice...
...14 M.L.R., February 1948, p. 131...
...The authors of a thoughtful study of the Packard Motor Co...
...42 Seymour H. Harris, "The Incidence of Inflation, or: Who Gets What...
...but this does not affect the present argument), the median income of all families in 1958 was $5,100...
...They all face imminent poverty, particularly in cases where unemployment is prolonged...
...111 Of the 42.2 million poor represented in Table III, roughly half are heads of households...
...The poverty from which they suffer is not a "case" problem, amenable to solution by social work, nor does it occur merely in "pockets" which can be eliminated by governmental action...
...merce publication), April I958, p. 10 ff...
...Too often, the plants affected by these new developments cease to exist, thus throwing the older workers with years of service to his employer into the jobseeking market where he must cope with age discrimination patterns among the remaining companies.54 " The length of unemployment of workers who lost their jobs because of the Packard plant closing averaged six months for nearly half of them...
...22 Robert E. Graham, Jr., "Regional Markets in 1958," Survey of Current Business, August 1959, p. 15...
...Lowly-paid jobs exist independent of discrimination and inability to compete on equal terms...
...two-thirds of them must get along on annual incomes considerablybelow $1,500.81 Poverty among women is in many cases directly related to the disintegrative effects on recent migrants from rural areas of an exploitative system of labor allocation...
...8 Government policy has resulted in major redistributive movements among the lower income groups rather than between the higher and lower ones...
...12, Study of Employment, Growth and Price Levels for the Consideration of the Joint Economic Committee, Joint Economic Committee of Congress, December 1959...
...In October 1951, such a family's annual cost of living on a "modest but adequate" scale, averaged (by this writer) for 34 cities, ran to $4,163...
...19 Some of the heads of these families may, however, have been professionals in trainee or graduate status, obtaining financial support—not enumerated as income—from relatives, or just willing to make do temporarily...
...a brief survey must suffice...
...According to a recent study by Robert Lampman,l° 1% of U.S...
...cit., p. 57 and p. 149...
...The top 1% of adults owned close to 76% of the value of corporate stock in 1953, as against 62% in 1922...
...For example, there were about 2.3 million families in 1958 headed by persons under 25 and averaging three members...
...Roughly half of these families were reported to live on incomes below $3,000...
...The of Personal Income," Survey of Current tables in the text were derived from the Business (a U.S...
...the meager wages they received a decade ago have been transformed into meager pensions, so that in terms of welfare there has undeniably been some progress...
...cit., testimony of Solomon Barkin, director of research, Textile Workers Union of America, p. 19 ff...
...Less than $50 then (less than $35 in constant dollars) were added to the income of the aged in 10 years of unprecedented prosperity...
...50 Statement of James P. Mitchell, Sec retary of Labor, before the Subcommittee on Labor Standards, House Committee on Education and Labor, April 21, 1960, p. 4 (U.S...
...1 Selma F. Goldsmith, "Size Distribution publication, April 1960, P. 8 ff...
...Department of Commerce...
...Mass unemployment on the scale of the thirties which, of course, vitiated much of the progress made in advancing wage rates, appears to have become less of a threat...
...Rather, as will be shown further on, there has frequently been active displacement of workers...
...33, op...
...This assertion involves a value judgment which is certainly debatable...
...This type of income diminishes in significance as the scale of income gets lower...
...unemployment systems have become footballs in this competition, to the detriment of their intended beneficiaries.43 Income losses are severe when unemployment strikes...
...The number of production workers in manufacturing has actually declined over the 11-year period, from 12.7 million to 12.2 million, i.e., by almost 4...
...To give the reader an inkling of that rapidity, let us cite a few illustrative data...
...V1 The rapidity of technological change over the last ten years is at the root of the problem of "downgrading" and of the rise in chronic unemployment...
...Travel time is, of course, not included in the work week, though it should be...
...population, have incomes failing to meet basic needs...
...In 1958, for example, the income share of the top 20% of recipients was reduced from 45.5% to 43.7% owing to Federal tax liability...
...For two persons—.65...
...However, it is regarded by its authors as "below the average level enjoyed by Amer...
...Let us cite an example: Numerical controls for metal cutting machines, fed by computers via tapes to electronic devices guiding the tool are known to be slowly but inexorably reducing the need for skilled machinists...
...For old people, however, a steady and adequate income is nowadays the chief means of preserving a personal sense of dignity, of banishing the fear or actuality of falling into dependence on relatives or relief agencies...
...cit., p. 14...
...3 The postwar expansion of family incomes has to a large extent been made possible by the entry of wives into the labor force: 30% of all wives (with husbands present) were gainfully employed in 1957, as against only 15% in 1940...
...still, it must be noted that the transfer of funds effected through it occurs chiefly between the pockets of the same pair of pants...
...It is true, the passing on by employers of their share of social insurance costs means that redistribution takes place, but such passing-on has the effect of a regressive tax...
...or whose income security is increasingly impaired...
...The contraction of anthracite and bituminous mining in Pennsylvania, for example, is hardly the result of local developments...
...Why, to begin with, should a large employer be permitted to leave an entire community stranded by moving away...
...50, No...
...As has already been indicated, uncontrolled economic growth tends to aggravate the unequal distribution of wealth and incomes between classes as well as between regions and occupations...
...40 Philip Eden, "For More Adequate Measurement of Unemployment," Current Economic Comment, University of Indiana, p. 21...
...Its economic value is limited by the great waste of public and private capital it implies for the communities left behind and the social and human problems it creates...
...cit., table 5. 18 For another independent estimate, see Martin David, "Welfare, Income and Budget Needs," Review of Economics and Statistics, November 1959, p. 393 ff...
...The nature of poverty in the U.S., as in other advanced countries, has unquestionably changed from previous decades, when not only economically marginal or inactive groups but large masses of industrial workers were compelled to live at substandard and even below-subsistence incomes...
...They separate, or the husband deserts...
...It is this problem of downgrading and chronic unemployment of workers which we turn to now...
...And indeed, according to a recent study by Oscar Handlin, earnings differentials for given jobs between Negroes and Puerto Ricans on the one hand, and non-Puerto Rican whites on the other, have been diminishing...
...The average weekly wage in durables manufacturing runs about $98 at present, that in nondurables, to about $80...
...The revision of the City Worker's Family Budget and the higher income it calls for do not, of course, affect the writer's methodological approach in determining the extent of poverty in the U.S...
...Department of Labor press release...
...In 1948, the annual average duration of unemployment was 8.6 weeks...
...B.] from openly recommending outmigration or even local industrialization...
...The outstanding example of an occupational shift in response to job opportunities opened up by general economic growth is that from agricultural to nonagricultural employment...
...Other examples of downgrading associated with structural and technological changes can also be found in the Hearings of the Senate's Committee on Unemployment Problems...
...With the vast technological and economic changes now occurring in the automobile industry, the whole middlewestern complex built around it is going to be beset by long-term problems of redevelopment...
...Increases in incomes in the prosperous mid-fifties were far smaller in the Southeast and some other areas than elsewhere...
...But more than that—more than a subsistence income for them—is certainly not now in sight...
...But the new developments of technical progress and decentralization and industrial consolidations create conditions that were not foreseen when the current principle of seniority rights was promulgated...
...the typical socio-political dominance of a few large farmers interested in preserving a plentiful and cheap farm labor supply . . . frequently deters local program leaders [of the Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Program—H...
...Survey, op...
...55 ibid., p. 65...
...have expanded immensely since World War H. Industrial production has grown at more than twice the average rate of population increase...
...Nonetheless, a much larger proportion of the aged is now able to retire...
...Furthermore, there are large groups of wage earners in certain semi-skilled and unskilled occupations whose incomes tend to be close to subsistence levels...
...Unemployment due to changing technology is not a new problemin capitalist society...
...First, the labor force will be growing more rapidly during the present and subsequent decade than at any time since the early years of this century, due to the upsurge in births since 1940...
...The contraction in the share of this bracket can probably be ascribed to a shift in importance in the form of its income, from salaries, interest or dividends, to capital gains...
...41 Monthly Report on the Labor Force, U.S...
...Robert Lampman, in the study on the low-income population sponsored by the Joint Economic Committee referred to above, sets a minimum income of $2,500 and, on that basis, estimates that there are 32.2 million poor in the U.S...
...We are referring to persons made jobless, or threatened by joblessness, because of technological and , other structural changes in the economy, or because of cyclical fluctuations...
...This sum included allowances for income tax, social security contributions, a small life insurance, and meals eaten out by the breadwinner...
...Department of Labor, May 1952...
...For poverty to be eradicated, the structure of the economy would have to be substantially modified...
...Local industrialization would thus have to carry a far greater burden of reducing rural poverty than hitherto...
...For the affected older workers—those over 40—it usually represents no solution at all...
...cit., April 1959...
...7 Allocation of the Tax Burden by Income Class, issued by the Tax Foundation, New York, N.Y., 1960...
...3.4 4.8% —— Not only has there been a notable upward trend in unemployment over the low and the high points of the cycle, there also has been a lengthening of the period of unemployment...
...These, when realized (i.e., through the sale of an appreciated stock), are taxed at a much lower rate than other kinds of income, and are not reported as part of personal income in the Department of Commerce statistics here used...
...The wealth and capital resources of the U.S...
...Forty-six (out of a total of 149) major labor areas, and 143 smaller centers were classified by the U.S...
...The gross national product has risen by 477 since 1947, in real terms...
...In a fourperson household where the claimant is head, cash income drops by 50% (evidently assuming, however, that there are some earnings by other members of the household...
...13 M.L.R., February 1951, p. 155...
...52 Area Development Act, op...
...and "Population Characteristics," Current Population Reports, Bureau of the Census, series P -20, No...
...The implicit multipliers are as follows: For a family of four with an income of $3000 a year—'l.0...
...and many of them are Negroes...
...Study Paper Na...
...It has risen substantially since 1890...
...For one person— .462...
...33, op...
...For six persons-1.28...
...V While the proportions of "status poverty" in the U.S...
...We shall return to this subject again briefly in Part VI...
...For two decades, it has been taken for granted that the experience of years, the seniority provisions gained through collective bargaining and the like, were guarantees of job security for the older worker...
...David formulates an index of welfare, relating a household's current resources to basic needs, as defined by the size and age composition of the household, and the employment status of its members...
...Service worker employment has expanded nearly as fast as whitecollar employment since 1950, i.e., by 20%, to over 8 million...
...If partial unemployment (i.e., involuntary part-time shifts) is added up so as to yield a full-time equivalent—this can be done on the basis of official data—total unemployment in 1958 amounted to about 7.2 million persons...
...We have attempted to analyze its causes...
...Reference is to before-tax income...
...Payouts from these funds have tripled since 1949, and run to about $16 billion a year at present . 9 The Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) portion of social insurance, being financed to the extent of 50% from contributions levied on the first $4,800 of earnings, falls most heavily on the lower wage and salary earners...
...It is characteristic of a free-market economy that it breeds the virtuous circle of growth in some favored regions and the vicious circle of stagnation and decline in unfavored ones...
...Poverty in the United States remains a general social problem, a consequence of the way our economy operates...
...economy...
...cit., Computations by the writer...
...The insurance principle is in itself "neutral" with respect to the distribution of income—which is to say, it helps perpetuate it...
...Furthermore, there has been no abatement in the concentration of stock ownership which, from the point of view of the economic weight of financial assets, represents the most important form of wealth in the U.S...
...Why should it be possible for automation and other technological changes to be introduced without regard to their effects on jobs...
...cit., testimony of Frank Fernbach, staff economist of AFL-CIO, p. 244...
...Poorer couples usually don't divorce...
...The social welfare and insurance schemes which have been created over the past two decades have mitigated the extremes of income insecurity among the aged and the short-term unemployed...
...But, on the other hand, lack of experience and of seniority rights make young workers the first victims of layoffs...
...Job insecurity is becoming rather typical outside the bureaucratic and other "overhead" sectors of the U.S...
...Industrialization has taken place in the South...
...Department of Labor, and quoted in Harris, op...
...This brings us to a brief analysis of poverty among the aged...
...14 The BLS's urban worker family consists of an employed father, a housewife not gainfully employed, and two children under 15 but over 8 years old...
...B.] The service-type industries, with typically lower wages and less desirable working conditions, hired proportionately more Negroes than Whites...
...2 According to Census estimates (in which incomes are tabulated on a somewhat different basis from the one used by the Department of Commerce's Office of Business Economics...
...But see, Dale E. Hathaway, "Migration from Agriculture: The Historical Record and its Meaning," in American 'Economic Review, Vol...
...Their] savings decreased, and they were required to reduce, above all, their purchase of food and clothing...
...But usually these don't amount to much: In 1959, 687 of U.S...
...Of these areas of substantial labor surplus, 70 were classified as having a "chronic" labor surplus, meaning that the unemployment rate was 50% above the national average...
...Undeniably, their wages have steadily risen, though their job security has not improved...
...The figures could be carried back to 1947 or forward to 1959 without showing any important deviation from the data presented...
...The average number of earners per family in the three middle fifths of income recipients rose from 1.45 in 1948 to 1.54 in 1957...
...and James Y. Maddox, "Private and Social Costs of the Movement of People out of Agriculture," ibid., especially p. 399 ff...
...28 The Report of the Immigra " tion Commission of the 61st Congress (1911), quoted by the authority just cited, states that in bituminous coal mining, "Southern and Eastern Europeans are confined to pick mining and the unskilled and common labor jobs...
...in the South it was $'2,055, and for rural Negro families it was $1,089, less than half the nationwide average...
...51 Area Development Act, op...
...12 "City Worker's Family Budget for October 1951," Monthly Labor Review, a publication of the U.S...
...ican families," although sufficient to "maintain a level of adequate living according to standards prevailing in large cities of the U.S...
...It was based on a prewar pattern of living—this is the major weakness in its use today—but, of course, it took account of postwar family living costs...
...Manufacturing production between 1948 and 1959 rose by about 60°%o, while employment in manufacturing industries increased by only about 6...
...Department of Com- data in these articles...
...in banks, to under $70.49 Furthermore, "manual" workers still represent nearly 37% of the total labor force, though this is down from 38.5% 10 years ago...
...The shape of the pyramid of income distribution in America has barely changed during the postwar period (see Table I), although that pyramid has moved to higher ground (see Table II...
...This decline was by no means permitted to occur simply through attrition (i.e., death, retirement, quits, etc...
...cash outlays decline by over 20...
...The annual cost of the budget averages roughly $6,000, ranging from a low of $5,400 in Houston to a high of $6,600 in Seattle...
...productivity, by 45 %. Yet poverty has persisted on a relatively large scale...
...Generally speaking, rising educational standards, insofar as they accord with the requirements set by the institutional environment, tend to raise productivity, and hence incomes...
...Furthermore, assuming that $2,000 (i.e., earnings at $1 an hour, the present Federal minimum wage, for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year) provide a "moderate but adequate" living for an unattached individual, we must add about 4 million persons who received less than that amount in 1958...
...The unequal distribution of income among regions and states is thus a major factor in the perpetuation of poverty in the U.S...
...Possibly one-third of them are in part-time positions, a fact which has a necessarily depressing effect on conditions of work and wages, despite the considerable investment in latest types of equipment and the unusual pace of organizational innovation in 348 trade and office administration...
...is relatively high...
...Consider a family," writes Lloyd Reynolds of Yale University, "in which the husband's income alone is insufficient to support the family at minimum level...
...This budget takes postwar living standards more or less fully into account...
...And, second, the problem of structural unemployment and of depressed industrial areas, to be discussed in the sections below is becoming increasingly weighty...
...Technological advancement and the bureaucratization of society have tended, of course, to raise educational and skill requirements...
...Probably not...
...28 Brinley Thomas, Migration and Economic Growth, Cambridge: 1954, p. 153...
...16 M.L.R., February 1948, p. 179...
...adults (persons over 20 years old) held 26% of the tangible wealth in 1958 (stocks, bonds, mortgages and real estate, etc...
...It is an open question whether educational standards should always accord with social rather than with human needs...
...20 Lack of a steady income and of definite occupational perspectives among young people, and the increasing slowness with which they are integrated into the labor force, certainly is an aspect of poverty peculiar to them...
...Department of Labor, March 1960, and Federal Reserve Bulletin, December 1959 and April 1960...
...Eligibility rules have progressively become more restrictive...
...waiting periods have been extended...
...Economic growth" is not merely unequal, it is necessarily unequal in the incidence of its benefits (or of its costs) where private investment decisions of profound public impact can be made with relative freedom from Government controls...
...The investment policies referred to have been and are, of course, subject to the dictates of a relatively free-market economy...
...Unemployment insurance, another type of transfer payment, is in many states partially borne by the insured workers, while the employers' premium is defrayed through charges against Iabor costs...
...26 " The transfer of low-income individuals to presumably more productive occupations and regions, occurring as it does under generally chaotic conditions, does not necessarily reduce or eliminate the social costs of poverty, but often simply shifts their incidence...
...I1 Before proceeding to a detailed analysis of poverty, a criterion of income adequacy must be formulated...
...See reference note 8.) Perhaps not all of the 42.2 million persons receiving less than the minimum income postulated in the table above should be considered poor...
...Yes, probably...
...or about the number of persons contributing to family incomes...
...seem likely to contract, the threat of income loss resulting from unemployment or from being downgraded is, as we shall see, growing...
...Social security coverage is likely to be extended, benefits are likely to increase...
...Between 1953 and 1958, spending on "conventional" armaments declined from $15 billion to $5 billion, an enormous drop over so short 347 a period, which has probably been a major factor in the stagnation of such regions as Southern Michigan and certain airplane centers in the East.46 According to General Orval R. Cook (ret...
...15 The difference between personal income tabulated by the Office of Business Economics and that enumerated by Census arises from the inclusion of nonmoney income by the former agency in its data...
...Low agricultural income continues to mark many areas of the country, but especially the South...
...34 Consumer Income, series P-60, No...
...cit., p. 30...
...shutdown in Detroit in 1956, "Too Old to Work—Too Young to Retire," done for the U.S...
...1242, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S...
...The concentration of wealth, in addition to its untoward social and political effects, of necessity exacerbates the inequality of the distribution of income...
...I Conceivably, the distribution of income could be unequal without there being any poverty...
...Why should that change not be slowed, its direction controlled, its impact mitigated...
...Department of Labor's Bureau of Employment Security as "areas of substantial labor surplus" in July 1959 (i.e., 6% or more of the civilian labor force was out of work...
...Furthermore, while there are about 900,000 incorporated firms in the U.S., whose net profits ran to some $23 billion in 1956, over one-third of these profits, or $8.3 billion, went to only 100 corporations...
...But is that uptrend, by itself, a factor tending to raise family incomes...
...8 "The Low Income Population and Economic Growth," by Robert Lampman, Study Paper No...
...in recent years" (p...
...51 " Structural and technological unemployment cannot be alleviated by raising the general level of income and employment...
...Rather, it was . . . the point where the struggle for 'more and more' things gives way to the desire for 'better and better' quality...
...The industry on which such a community is built simply collapses...
...Unemployment benefits, where the unemployed worker is indeed eligible for them (and one-third of all jobless are not), are far too small to make up for more than a fraction of his income loss...
...4 How long outlays can remain ahead of income depends largely upon savings...
...The Social Security Administration's standard budget for an elderly couple (without dependents), formulated in 1948 and averaged for 34 cities (by this writer), required an income of $2,415 in 1959, after rough adjustment for price increases over the preceding 11 years 87 However, the budget's allowance for medical care and drugs, an obviously major item in old people's expenditures, were based on patterns dating back to 1928-31, and were admittedly out of date even at the time the budget was compiled...
...incomes there have risen...
...The budget made no provisions for savings, health insurance, a telephone, or the operation of a car...
...Per capita income in the southeastern states rose by $240 between 1951 and 1958, while that of New England, for example, increased by $355...
...44 Data assembled by the Bureau of Employment Security, U.S...
...Below this level . . . people find it harder and harder to economize," i.e., they become progressively less able to spare money since there are fewer cheaper goods among which they can choose...
...35 Social Security Bulletin, November 1959...
...What weight should be given this factor...
...Second, the administration of unemployment insurance has tended to become harsher...
...In 1957, 477 even of the skilled workers had been jobless for more than six months, as against "only" 29% of the skilled young...
...president of the Aerospace Industries Association of America, airplane manufacturing jobs in just the past three years dropped from over 900,000 to 680,000, with the decline in production workers alone running close to 200,000...
...Nevertheless, as of 1958, the unequal pattern of regional income distribution had not changed...
...Among those [former Packard workers] obtaining employment for any length of time," write the authors of the report already cited, "there was an increase in the number required to accept unskilled jobs as compared to their skill levels while employed at Packard...
...cit., April 1960...
...About 75% of income from dividends went to the 13% of consumer units with incomes of $10,000 or more in 1957...
...They are faced with a truly desperate situation since not only are their skills frequently obsolescent but they are also discriminated against on account of age...
...However, only about half of them earn incomes close to or exceeding $100 a week, a rather modest sum nowadays...
...Department of Health, Education and Welfare, October 1959 10 "Changes in the Share of Wealth Held by Top Wealth Holders, 1922-1956," by Robert Lampman, Occasional Paper No...
...However, the median income of that near one-half of all U.S...
...The table above reflects poverty as a status...
...But it is not an open question whether the incomes of the poor should be raised...
...The service industries' investment in labor-saving devices and rationalization rivals, in some respects, those in retail and office administration...
...Thus, transfer payments are mainly derived nowadays from social insurance funds...
...The after-tax share of the lowest quintile was raised by only three-tenths of 1%, and that of the other quintiles by about four-tenths of 1% from the before-tax figure.° Furthermore, the impact of all taxes taken together on incomes is actually greater for low-income than for higher-income recipients: 28.3% of the family income under ,^2,000 is paid out to Federal, State and local governments, while families earning five-seven times as much surrender only 24% of their incomes to public authorities...
...As regards savings, according to a Federal Reserve survey in 1959, 32% of persons over 65 owned no liquid assets at all, and at least another 307 had less than $500 in such assets 38 In terms of income, the majority of the aged are not much better off today than they were 10-12 years ago...
...in recent years may well be an advance warning of what the "soaring" sixties have in store on a considerably enhanced scale—unless technological changes and the economic instability they give rise to are subjected to rational controls, devised in the interests of human labor...
...is really quite recent in terms ofthe magnitude of the problem...
...More than 3 million nonfarm workers earn less than $1.25 an hour, and about 1.4 million of these are paid less than $1.° V11 In a class society in which the gains resulting from technological and innovational change can be and are appropriated by groups favorably located on the scale of wealth and status, one cannot impartially weigh gains against losses...
...7, Joint Economic Committee, November 1959, p. 6. 43 ibid., p. 64...
...Of these, a very large portion, numbering about II million, are children...
...In 1957, the average unemployment benefit amounted to $28.21 for all 48 States, compared with $10.66 in 1939...
...Department of Labor...
...but, for reasons to be discussed, the number of persons belonging to these strata is probably slowly shrinking...
...If current resources and liquid assets are related to basic needs, the percentage is 28.7% 19 Board of Governors, Federal Reserve Board, Survey of Consumer Finances, 1959, p. 713...
...in general merchandising stores, to less than $48...
...In the spring of 1958, almost 300,000, or 18% of its labor force, pounded its streets 5 2 Solomon Barkin, in an analysis of the problem of distressed areas and chronic unemployment has this to say: "There are economic conditions which cause the deterioration of an entire area...
...33, op...
...2 (May 1960), especially p. 390...
...Social security payments are putting a floor under the incomes of the aged, one that is rising but slowly, however, and that still does not support some 30% of the 16 million old people in the U.S...
...Incomes in kind of high-income recipients are inadequately or not at all enumerated, most notably tax-exempt expense accounts...
...30 Oscar Handlin, The Newcomers, Negroes and Puerto Ricans in a Changing Metropolis, Cambridge, Mass., 1959, p. 70...
...The steady increase has largely been due to growing long-term unemployment: In 1948, 15% of the jobless were out of work 15 or more weeks...
...Incentives to private investors to locate factories and other businesses in regions affected by declining industries would also alleviate job problems...
...The number of professional and technical employees rose from around 4.5 million in 1950 to 7.1 million in 1959, a 60% increase...
...Between 1960 and 1965, 1.1 million persons are expected to enter it annually, net...
...The national divorce rate, though relatively high, does not fully reflect the extent of family disintegration...
...21 and 26...
...Census estimates of jobless persons actively looking for work averaged just under 4.7 million for all of 1958, or 6.87 of the civilian labor force...
...cit., April 1960, p. 13...
...On the economic side .. . the average hourly wage of the re-employed was below that earned at Packard...
...These areas accounted for about 500,000 unemployed, 15% of the jobless total in July 1959...
...On the other hand, the gain of the top 20% exceeded the average by 119%, and that of the top 5% by 264...
...A recent agreement between private hospitals in New York and a hospital workers union, raising wages of a sizable number of workers to $1 an hour, was greeted as a substantial gain...
...The extent to which persons and families are excluded from "enjoying the average level" of American living standards is substantially greater than indicated by the writer's compilations...
...are Negroes, who represent but one-tenth of the total population...
...This means that the number exhausting their benefits has been increasing...
...However, the prospects of continued absorption of migrants by the nonfarm economy are now dimming...
...A very longrun tendency towards the equalization of wealth appears to operate: thus in 1922, the top 1% held roughly 32% of U.S...
...A recent Michigan study reported that, although persons born in the South make up only 9.5% of the State's population, they account for 31% of the prison commitments...
...This lowering of rates is linked to the sharpening competition among states for industries...
...2 Survey of Current Business, April 1959, and, by the same author in the same p. 9 ff...
...the other, the instability of an economy based on private property...
...State, op...
...lengthened...
...cit., p. 59...
...During the latest business expansion, which may well have reached its cyclical peak early this year, the unemployment rate was greater than at the comparable point in either of the two previous postwar cycles, notwithstanding much higher output indexes...
...Using Census data of money income in 1958, we shall assume that $3,000 covers the subsistence needs of a family of four.Census income data does not reflect (as do Office of Business Economics figures) some aypes of nonmoney incomes, such as the imputable net rent from a home partly or wholly owned...
...However, job insecurity is now intensifying for industrial workers as a result of the acceleration of output rates resulting from rapid technological changes and of the unmistakable tendency towards overcapacity in many sectors of industry...
...Between 1951 and 1958, the cost of living rose by about 11%, so that in the latter year an income of roughly $4,600 was needed to cover the modest expenditures budgeted by BLS.* • Since this article went to press, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has published a revised City Worker's Family Budget (see Monthly Labor Review, August 1960, p. 785 ff...
...Senate's Special Committee on Unemployment Problems, state: "Our study is . . . a kind of portent of a new possibility in the world of work in America...
...100, March 1959, table 9. 20 Employment and Earnings, a publication of the U.S...
...33, op...
...This inequality is Iargely caused by past and present investment policies of private industry, coupled with the inadequacy of public policies for spurring more productive employment of resources in low-income regions...
...63 When rapid changes tend to depress a great regional economy, migration is a partial solution at best...
...in fact, the fraction covered by benefits has actually diminished over the past 20 years...
...The problem of preserving and creating jobs will thus become a very serious one...
...However, taking the postwar years alone, the trend has been quite unfavorable...
...In coal mining the corresponding figures are —25.5% for production and —60.2% for employment, reflecting partly the shift towards liquid and gaseous fuels and partly the mechanization of mining...
...In prosperous 1956, 7.27 of Detroit's working population was jobless...
...The past two decades of general prosperity have encouraged the flow of interregional migration...
...over two-thirds of the growth in the U.S...
...Similarly, 37% of elderly couples and other households headed by a person over 65 have poverty incomes...
...45 1959 Survey of Consumer Finances, op...
...48 "Trends in Machine Tool Design," American Machinist, March 7, 1960, p. 90...
...Existing educational systems, social groupings and economic structures have been disrupted by the rapid influx of migrants into urban areas . . . (The) rapid replacement of the old population in central cities by migrant nonwhites whose economic status is low [adds] considerably to the difficult adjustment problems already mounting in urban areas...
...Poverty in the U.S...
...16 TABLE III Number of Persons and Percent of Consumer Units With Incomes Below the Indicated Minimum, 1958 17 Percent of All Number of Persons Size of Con-Consumer Units Receiving Less Than sumer Unit In Size Group Specified Minimum Income In Thous...
...the other half are dependents...
...Of these 30%, more than half, or 2.5 million, were wards of local welfare agencies in 1958.33 In 1958, the average social security benefit amounted to $71 a month 34 This compares with $26 in 1948...
...It is true that homeownership and, in some cases, the possession of other nonliquid assets mitigates the hardships of a low cash income...
...Nor is the concentration of unemployment in defunct one-company towns of recent origin...
...Of these, about one-third live in households where the father is "absent...
...54 H. L. Sheppard, L. A. Ferman and S. Faber, Too Old to Work, Too Young to Retire: A Case Study of a Permanent Plant Shutdown, Special Committee on Unemployment Problems, U.S...
...71, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1960, pp...
...U Lloyd G. Reynolds, Labor Economics and Labor Relations, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1956, p. 655-6...
...The rate for whites born in the South is more than twice the rate for whites born in Michigan...
...32 Poverty among women also is one of the harsher effects of the unequal distribution of incomes...
...They say nothing, for example, about the distribution of wealth...
...this is happening with textiles, railroad repair shops, coal, agricultural implements, automobiles...
...Millions of children are eco nomically disadvantaged," says the U.S...
...Some persons with low incomes may own assets from which they derive a modest revenue or on which they can draw in case of need...
...According to the American Machinist, the leading trade journal of the nonelectrical machinery industry, recent innovations in metalworking...
...and M.L.R., September 1951...
...The unemployment rate of the civilian labor force in the male 20-24-year-old bracket early in 1959 exceeded 12%, and was close to 10% during the first quarter of this year...
...33, Bureau of the Census, U.S...
...It, too, must be regarded in the light of cumulative technological changes in transportation and energy sources...
...27 " The surge of Negro and Puerto Rican migration into Northern cities during the fifties is quite comparable, except in magnitude to the waves of foreign immigration into the U.S...
...today...
...For three persons...
...Both rates were about twice the average unemployment rate for the periods indicated...
...In 1958, the mean size of consumer units in the lower two-fifths of all income brackets came to about 3.44 persons...
...See Chronic Labor Surplus Areas, July 1959, Experience and Outlook, a publication of the above-named agency...
...Like all statistics, the statistics of income distribution have limited illustrative value...
...In some respects, then, status poverty will undoubtedly diminish over coming years...
...However, "the emergence of the distressed industrial area...
...cit., p. 716 and p. 1112...
...population since the end of World War II has taken place in the suburbs, and virtually all new industrial plants and shopping centers were built outside the central cities...
...Still, the $3,000 subsistence income postulated here is substantially below the BLS standard, although well ahead of what many public and private agencies consider as needed for subsistence.'$ In order to arrive at the minimum needs of units with more or fewer than four persons, multipliers implicit in estimates of consumer needs by family size made by BLS 12 years ago have been used...
...27 Dale E. Hathaway, "Migration from Farms and its Meaning," M.L.R., February 1960, p. 139...
...But in the latter year, average benefits made up for 41% of wages lost, while in 1957 they covered only 35%.442 Of course, it was much easier to get another job than in 1939, so that perhaps one cannot properly speak of a deterioration in the economic position of the unemployed over this twenty-year period...
...Population and Labor Force Projections for the United States, 1960-1975," Bulletin No...
...Roughly 19.4 million persons live in these households, and more than half of these live on less than subsistence incomes...
...About two-thirds of these children are members of big families living in rural areas...
...35 Sample surveys by that agency have shown that the total income of 35% of elderly couples runs to less than $1,800 a year, and those of 58% of nonmarried elderly persons to less than $1,200.36 The income needs of the aged are not much below those of economically more active groups...
...i.e., their incomes are gradually approaching subsistence levels...
...Period of the Korean War, 1950-52, was omitted from this table...
...47 Chamber of Commerce of the United States News Service, Text of Statement of General O. R. Cook, June 27, 1960...
...in fact, the South's successful competition for industry has had damaging effects on the economies of other areas of the country, and has led Southern Congressmen to oppose distressed area assistance schemes for fear that these would keep industries from moving south...
...As already indicated, there has been a sharp absolute and relative decline in the number of manufacturing production workers...
...32 Public Assistance Recipients in New York State, January-February 1957, by Eleanor M. Snyder, State of New York, Interdepartmental Committee on Low Incomes, p. 36...
...In certain key industries, there has been a drop in output accompanied by a much sharper drop in employment...
...Its remedy lies clearly not in a mere acceleration of economic growth...
...cit., p. 146...
...What has been happening in the areas of chronic labor surplus of the U.S...
...1950 and 1958 1 Quintile of Consumer Units, Percent Distribution of Family Ranked by Income Personal After-Tax Income 1950 1958 Lowest 5.1 % 5.0% 2nd 11.4 11.6 3rd 16.8 16.9 4th 22.7 22.8 Highest 44.0 43.7 Top 5% (19.2) (18.2) Total 100.0% 100.0% 334 benefits are based...
...The same situation exists in iron and steel and glass (and textile) manufacturing, and in all divisions of manufacturing enterprise.29 The Irish immigrants of the mid-19th century faced an " analogous situation (in the New England textile industry) and discrimination against them was in some respects strikingly similar to that which exists today against urban Negroes and Puerto Ricans...
...And, as has been said above, the labor force can be expected to grow at a faster rate during this decade as the great number of babies born since 1946 comes of age...
...34I Perhaps one-fifth of the poor in the U.S...
...in some states, the rate is less than 1...
...Children's Bureau, 21 "not only because of the low income of their families but also because of the economic situation of the states in which they reside"—meaning in the main that they lack proper educational facilities...
...In 1958, there were around 11.9 million families, numbering some 40.7 million persons, whose incomes fell below $4,000...
...The existence of widespread chronic (or, if you will, semi-chronic) unemployment argues against the generally held belief that economic growth alone suffices to absorb redundant labor...
...However, not only does a sizable portion of the aged not own any assets whatever but, in so far as they do own houses, the latter's state of repair is frequently bad and their market worth low...
...48 The existing lit " erature on automation is full of examples confirming the trend implied in this quotation...
...This rate, too, represented a postwar high...
...There are over 6 million elderly widows living as "unattached individuals...
...24 Migration to other regions has not materially affected rural poverty in the South.25 But it has posed serious social and economic problems for the receiving areas...
...In automotive manufacturing, decentralization, increased efficiency, ruinous competition between auto firms, and the drop in military procure ment have recurrently caused Detroit to become one of the major distressed labor areas of the U.S...
...In New York City, for example, 82% of all aid to dependent children under official programs ("dependent" here is a euphemism for "fatherless") goes to Negroes and Puerto Ricans...
...11 Statistical Abstract for 1959, p. 487 ff...
...The rather modest Area Development Act, vetoed by President Eisenhower last Spring on the false ground that such communities can help themselves, would have provided some such incentives...
...This increase, however, has been entirely attributable to more white-collar jobs (including administrative, clerical, research, etc...
...The social security coverage of widows remains utterly inadequate, if there is coverage at all...
...The per capita income of the State of New York was over $500 above the national average of $2,057 in 1958...
...in 1948, it was 68...
...That the U.S...
...Between 1950 and 1959 alone, 1.7 million farm jobs disappeared...
...The basic official standard of income adequacy still is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' "City Worker's Family Budget," last priced in October 1951...
...However, the economic bases of migration have changed radically: the foreign immigrant waves coincided with the growth of mass production techniques involving "minute subdivision of operations and a wide adoption of automatic machines worked by unskilled and often illiterate men, women and children...
...21 "Children of Low-Income Families," prepared by the Children's Bureau, Social Security Administration, in Characteristics of the Low Income Population of the United States, Selected Materials Assembled by the Staff of the Subcommittee on Low Income Families, Joint Economic Committee on the Economic Report, 1955, p. 54...
...but this has probably a much more limited effect on the needed quality of the labor force as a whole than is commonly supposed...
...for 1959, tables 269 & 274...
...Rather, it was meant to represent "the necessary minimum" defined in terms both of scientific (or experts') desiderata of adequate nutrition, clothing and housing standards, and of community standards prevailing in the prewar period.13 "The necessary minimum was not conceived as the point below which people were considered poor...
...The pathos of becoming old in America is made especially poignant for the many millions of persons who reach 65 without adequate incomes...
...55 " Retraining of persons with obsolescent skills and the transfer of seniority rights would undoubtedly help those threatened by or actually suffering chronic unemployment...
...and in many instances, widows, whose housework and caring jobs had made it possible for their husbands to hold a job, are completely dependent upon public assistance...
...This trend in employment," states the General, "is continuing, with our labor force decreasing on a monthly average of (about) 5,000 workers.47 " The transformation of patterns of industrial location has been no less striking...
...There have probably been no other occupational movements which have proportionately been (or can be) so massive, excepting perhaps shifts out of mining (which happens also to be an extractive industry...
...Therefore, at certain levels, educational standards should be set primarily with a view to improving the social position of the underprivileged and the poor...
...3o " Thus, an analysis of the occupational structure of American society is necessary to explain low-wage incomes...
...in 1956, 21%, and this percentage has continued to mount...
...Government programs have subsidized farm prices rather than farm incomes and this has sharpened the inequality of agricultural incomes by favoring the big operators...
...they can generally regard present financial difficulties as a temporary condition...
...and part of the economic surplus now disposed of for private ends that are often socially undesirable, or for public purposes which frequently subserve those private ends, would have to be redirected...
...As the earnings of economically active groups and contributory rates rise, benefits, too, are bound to swell...
...For five persons-1.15...
...In business and professional families, the wife frequently prefers to continue working as a 'career woman.' It seems likely, however, that in working-class families the majority of working wives work out of necessity...
...25 Space does not permit detailed substantiation of this contention...
...In Pennsylvania's 11 areas of "substantial labor surplus," the unemployment rate was 117 of the civilian labor force in such "good" years as 1956 and 1957...
...One is the unequal distribution of income...
...WHILE IT IS NOT POSSIBLE here to examine in detail the institutional roots of the unequal distribution of income, we shall briefly deal with one of them: the extreme concentration of personal and corporate wealth in the U.S...
...consumer units were below that average...
...Will the gradual uptrend in educational attainment (of which there is no doubt) eliminate unskilled jobs as an occupational category...
...40 M.L.R., May 1960, p. 494, and Statis tical Abstract for 1959, table 279...
...While an ethnic minority can improve its lot by acquiring more and better education and skills, this does not in itself affect the occupational structure of society as a whole...
...24 Consumer Income, series P-60, No...
...46 Sources for this survey of technological changes since World War II will be furnished by the writer on request...
...37 "A Budget for an Elderly Couple," Social Security Administration, Bureau of Research and Statistics, Bureau Memorandum No...
...Senate, December 1959...
...23 "Size Distribution of Personal Income," Survey, op...
...A somewhat more refined approach to estimating the extent of poverty yields substantially the same results...
...There may be other reasons why the statistics of low-income status overstate poverty...
...prior to the twenties...
...Income disparities exist because of the fact that "Negroes and Puerto Ricans were clustered in the least rewarding occupations...
...TABLE IV Unemployment and Unemployment Rates in Three Postwar Business Cycles 41* Cycle Peak Cycle Trough Business Number unemployed Unemployment Number unem-UnemCycle Years (in millions) Rate ployed (in millions) ployment (in %) Rate (in %) 1947-49 2.2 3.6% 4.2 6.8% 1953-54 1.7 2.6% 4.0 6.2% 1957-58 2.6 3.8% 5.0 7.3% Jan...
...There is ample evidence of the deepening social and psychological trauma—and of the deleterious economic consequences—induced by the accelerating pace of technological change...
...3 "Income of Families and Persons in the United States," Consumer Income, P-60, No...
...3 of the Committee on BankI ing and Currency, House of Representatives, March 1959, p. 181...
...4 Survey, op...
...On the whole, however, it seems doubtful, especially in view of the independent estimates cited, whether these and similar qualifications would, were they statistically ascertainable, seriously affect the magnitudes recorded in Table III...
...THE DIFFERENTIAL between before- and after-tax income has only a minimal effect on income distribution...
...786...
...it says nothing about the systematic tendencies toward poverty just mentioned...
...These cannot be fully appraised here...
...On the basis of the BLS budget, a consumer unit of that size requires an income of $4,000...
...36 ibid...
...is closely linked to two basic institutional factors...
...Nor is it a "local" problem...
...Similarly, as has been indicated, in 1958, when a cyclical trough occurred, it exceeded the rates of the other two postwar trough years (see Table IV...
...4 Living standards cannot be analyzed without some reference to the effort necessary to attain and maintain them...
...There are today about 10.8 million households headed by women in the U.S...
...Yet, wages continue to be strikingly low, often less than $50...
...According to David's calculations, 35.4% of all spending units had current resources insufficient to cover basic needs in 1955...
...Younger people whose incomes are small can usually look forward to increased earnings...
...For seven and more-1.49...
...Rather, it is likely to require fundamental shifts in the allocation of resources—a redirection of the flow of abundance into more rational, socially and humanly more beneficial channels...
...But this is an academic proposition which ignores the social context in which these schemes exist, and the insurance principle on which TABLE Distribution of Family Personal Incomes After Federal Income Taxes Among Quintiles of Consumer Units...
...The experience of the Packard workers is unquestionably representative...
...It is true that the wage level in the U.S...
...Even for today's unskilled jobs, a more prolonged formal education seems necessary than for yesterday's...
...Median income" means that half of the recipients receive less and the other half more than the stated amount...
...For example, the average weekly wage in department stores and mail order houses in February 1960 ran to less than $53...
...The wife therefore works, though unwillingly, and her earnings are sufficient to bring total family income above the poverty line...
...Before we turn to a further exploration of these trends, let us look at the economic position of today's unemployed...
...cit., p. 715...
...Suburbs grew as much during the fifties as during the entire preceding half century...
...According to Lampman there has, however, been an upward movement in the amount of wealth holdings by the top 1% since 1949...
...Here it is our task to deal with some of the social and human losses...
...TABLE it Average Personal Family Income, After Federal Taxes, by Quintiles of Consumer Units, 1950 and 1958 (In Current Dollars) Quintile of Con-Average Personal Family In-Increase, Increase, sumer Unit, Ranked come, After Federal Taxes 1950-58, 1950-58, by Income 1950 1958 in $ in % Lowest $ 1,040 $ 1,413 $ 373 36% 2nd 2,329 3,287 958 41 3rd 3,416 4,758 1,342 39 4th 4,614 6,436 1,822 39 Highest 8,946 12,353 3,407 38 Top 5% (15,634) (20,582) (4,984) 32 Average $ 4,069 $ 5,650 $1.581 39% A glance at Table I shows that a change in income shares occurred only for the top 5% of income recipients over the postwar period...
...Government policy aimed at moderlating economic inequality seems merely to have prevented a fall in the share of the relatively poor," cautiously states a recent study prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress...
...Indeed, we shall find that our definition of poverty simply in terms of a subsistence income is inadequate...
...You cannot legislate against technological change, but you can create institutions and formulate procedures aimed at modifying its untoward effects...
...By 1958, no more than three-fifths of our sample, were working jobs at skill levels equal to or above those held at Packard...
...Indeed, this is not merely desirable, it is becoming a necessity: Labor-saving machinery and labor-saving organizational innovations are gradually invading the service and trade sectors, which have absorbed almost all of the net increase in the labor force since World War II...
...4° More disturbing still than these figures is the trend in unemployment over the postwar period...
...According to Census data, 2.6 million "unattached individuals" 65 years old and more, or almost three-fifths in this age bracket, have incomes below $1,500...
...Where weeks and months go by without the chief breadwinner finding a job, his benefits dry up and he is compelled either to go on relief or, if he is lucky, he finds a job frequently requiring less or no skill and paying lower wages...
...The steady advance in productivity in the extractive and manufacturing industries, together with the organization of industrial trade unions, has long ago resulted in raising wage levels above mere subsistence needs...
...And all this means that tens and hundreds of thousands of automobile workers now in this industry will no longer find employment...
...tax system has become less and less progressive and that it places an increasingly inequitable burden on lower income groups is shown in an excellent article by Robert Lampman in the September 1959 Commentary, to which the interested reader is referred...
...1960...
...17 Derived from Consumer Income, P-60, No...
...But the estimates of income inadequacy presented in this article must, in the light of the revision, be considered as very conservative...
...On the other hand, the status of poverty cannot be assigned to large and growing numbers of people whose incomes and assets are contracting, even while they may still be well above subsistence needs...
...Closely paralleling these developments have been certain accelerated changes in the occupational structure of American society...
...Social insurance is, of course, vastly preferable to public assistance...
...For a most competent exposition of this point see Gunnar Myrdal's Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, London, 1957...
...Rather, one has to examine to whom accrue the gains, and who suffers the losses...
...53 Area Development Act, op...
...Opposition to public health insurance cannot be countenanced forever, even by a Republican administration...
...The percentage of old people earning less than $1,000 in constant dollars in 1957 was 60...
...this is too expensive...
...33 Public Assistance Recipients in N.Y...
...31 Consumer Income, series P-60, No...
...Farm income is distributed even more lopsidedly than nonfarm income: In 1958, 7% of all farm families received more than one-quarter of farm income, while one-quarter of all families received less than 7% of such income.23 The median income of all rural families was $2,747 in 1958...
...But a low-wage problem unquestionably persists, which lack of space does not permit us to analyze in detail...
...29 op...
...67, March 1948...
...It was not supposed to be a "subsistence" or "maintenance" level budget...
...Although no longer representative of today's cost pressures on actual family budgets, it must still serve public and private welfare agencies as a basic reference, and will serve as such here.12 The BLS budget was first devised in 1946 and 1947...
...There are broad social strata which are permanently poor...
...wealth...
...the 20% of all spending units who received only 5.1% of after-tax income in 1957 need not in theory have been poor, although in fact they were...
...IV There are two other large groups whose poverty is mirrored in Table III: Women household heads, and the aged...
...or about the degree and kind and social value of the effort necessary to earn a given income...
...The disparity of income between the upper and the lower income groups is probably much larger than is revealed by the table...
Vol. 7 • September 1960 • No. 4
