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Filed under: "Doctors Only", Ethics, Experts Invited, Health Economics, Health Insurance, Health Law & Policy, Healthcare Finance, Op-Editorials, Risk Management, Videos | Tagged: Eric Bricker, healthcare, healthcare poverty, life expectancy, poverty, poverty in health, SDOH, social determinants health | Leave a comment »
Fewer people in the US are living in poverty
By Rick Kahler CFP®
According to the October 2017 annual report of the Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institute, the number of Americans living in poverty declined by 13%, or 6 million people, in the two years from 2014 to 2016. That’s encouraging news.
Not so encouraging is that 40.6 million people still live under the government poverty level. This is about one out of every eight Americans. The department of Health and Human Services sets the poverty rate at $32,580 or less for a family of six and $16,020 or less for two people.
Who are those officially classified as poor?
According to IPUMS, an organization associated with the University of Minnesota which integrates worldwide census data, 33% are children under age 18 and 11% are seniors over age 65. So 56% of those living in poverty are of working age, ages 18-65.
Of those who are working age, 21% are disabled, 15% are caregivers, 13% are students, and 10% are early retirees or unclassified, which leaves 41% available to work full time. This is 24% of all people who are in poverty, or about 9.8 million people.
Of that 9.8 million, 65% work part time, 25% work full time, and 10% don’t work. This means just under one million of the 40.6 million people in poverty are actually able to work but unemployed.
Something I found interesting was that of the 65% who work part time, two-thirds (4.3 million) choose to do so and only one-third (2.1 million) would like to work full time. If we add the one million who are unemployed and the 2.1 million part time workers who want full time employment, we have 3.1 million people in poverty who would like to work full time, but can’t find work. This is just 7.4% of all people considered to be below the poverty level.
That leads me to wonder what might change if the 4.3 million choosing to work part time actually worked full time. Might a significant portion of them pull themselves and their families out of poverty? Is it possible that many of these people choose to live in poverty? Or might some of them choose to work part time because earning more would be countered by factors like higher child care costs or losses in government benefits? While I don’t have any statistics on this, I have a hunch it is both.
Keven Winder, a life coach who blogs at thriveinexile.com, has a post from June 2017 titled “The Poverty of the Poor.” He says, “The cause of poverty is not solely education, politics, or the need for jobs. It’s not mental illness, addiction, housing, or food programs,” which he contends are by-products of poverty. “Poverty is deeper. Poverty is disengagement from that which powers us.”
It seems to me that Winder is using “disengagement” to mean what might be described as emotional poverty. The type of emotional disengagement that helps keep people in poverty may be no different from that of a person who earns a comfortable income but chooses not to save for retirement. Or someone who loses a job but has too much false pride to take a lesser one even temporarily.
We know the cure for financial behaviors based in emotional disengagement is not more information. Those choosing to work part time and live in poverty don’t need budget figures on how earning more would increase their standard of living. The behavior goes much deeper and is emotionally entrenched.
Assessment
Certainly, financial therapy might make a difference. Unfortunately, it’s still unavailable for too many of those who need it the most.
Conclusion
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Filed under: Ethics, Funding Basics | Tagged: Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institute, IPUMS, Keven Winder, poverty, Rick Kahler CFP® | Leave a comment »
Known / Unknown to Health Professionals?
By Rick Kahler MS CFP®
Do you think the world is getting better, or worse, or neither?
Based on a recent survey by Max Roser of the University of Oxford, you probably said “worse.” That was the answer from about 95% of the survey respondents, who were from Sweden, Germany, and the US.
To be fair, it might have been good to put a time frame in that question. How would you have answered if the time frame was the last 70 years, 40 years, or 10 years? I suspect if people were asked if the world is getting better based on how it was 200 years ago, there may have been more positive answers.
The data time-line
In a recent article on ourworldindata.org, Roser noted that in 1820 only a miniscule slice of the elite enjoyed higher standards of living. Over 99% of people lived in extreme poverty, which the researchers measured as earning less than $1.90 a day. That number is adjusted for inflation, different price levels in countries, and currency differences.
Things really improved over the next 130 years. In 1950 (nearly 70 years ago) only 75% of the world was living in extreme poverty. In 1981 (nearly 40 years ago) that number was down to 44%. In the last ten years, the number of those living in extreme poverty dropped from 21% to 10%. That is amazing, especially when we consider that two-thirds of those in the US think extreme poverty has almost doubled in recent years.
As surprising as this data is, Roser adds another factor: the fall in extreme poverty is even more notable when we consider that the world population increased seven-fold in the last 200 years. Conventional wisdom may have assume such an increase in population would have had the opposite effect.
Change
What changed globally to produce such an incredible increase in the global standard of living in the light of exploding population growth? The world experienced an unprecedented period of economic growth and increasing productivity.
What was behind the economic growth?
My guess is that an experiment in democracy and free markets begun about 250 years ago with the founding of the United States had a lot to do with it.
It’s interesting that we’ve seen nothing about this trend in the media or from politicians. Wouldn’t a headline reading, “Extreme Poverty Rate Falls 50% in Ten Years” be noteworthy? Or how about “130,000 Fewer People A Day Are In Extreme Poverty Since 1990?”
During the same 200 year period illiteracy dropped from 88% to 15%. Global child mortality decreased from 42% to 4%. The number of those living in democratic societies rose from 1% to 53%. Even global income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient, while still very high, fell by 5% between 2003 and 2013.
We have heard nothing about any of that. Our news and our politicians do not emphasize how the world is changing but rather what is wrong in the world. Roser notes that, “The media focuses on single events and single events are often bad.” Most of us know intellectually that sensationalism sells and a steady diet of sensationalism can cause us to lose perspective.
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Assessment
The stories we hear of how financial well-being is in decline are not true. Such misinformation could be one of the biggest global threats we face. Believing that the poor are getting poorer and the rich growing richer on the backs of the poor polarizes and divides us. If the truth of the progress we’ve made became common knowledge, it could provide a foundation of collaboration and hope which would serve to unite us to continue the progress.
Conclusion
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Filed under: Financial Planning, LifeStyle | Tagged: Extreme Poverty, Max Roser, ourworldindata.org, poverty, Rick Kahler MS CFP® | Leave a comment »
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