The Barna Group is a company devoted to providing resources to Christian Ministries in the United States, and one of the big things that they do is provide statistics on things that are relevant to Christians. I was reading an article on their website recently about poverty and the perceptions that many Americans carry about poverty in the U.S..
Some of the highlights of the article included:
- Most people estimated the poverty level in the US to be around 30%, and the actual findings by the US Census Bureau is about 13%
- Most people believed that the poverty level was worse today than it was 25 years ago. However, the poverty rates are about the same as in the 1980’s
- The least likely group to have intentional contact with people below the poverty line were the Mosaics, i.e. 18-22 year olds
But the most shocking statistic that came out in the article was:
Something to remember when you’re taking in these statistics is that though a family may not be below the poverty line, and thus not considered impoverished, that family may still be poor in the sense that they struggle just to make ends meet.
2 Comments Received
July 15th, 2007 @5:48 pm
they have also changed the requirements for poverty, which lowers the income requirement for a family of four in the US as to mislead us in how many people are suffering.
July 15th, 2007 @9:25 pm
Yah, I’m sure that even though people may not live under a certain income line, they still would be considered “poor” by our general standards.
A good site I stumbled upon recently is http://www.city-data.com — for a lot of the major metropolitan cities it had data about the percentages of people living in poverty. It’s interesting how much poverty there is closer to city centers and it really makes you think about how our society really marginalizes certain groups of people.
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