US POVERTY INCREASES DESPITE ECONOMIC UPSWING

By Michael Probsting

[This article originally published in: junge Welt, August 31, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.jungewelt.de/2004/08-31/008.php.]

According to a recent study of the official US Census Bureau, the number of the poor in the United States has increased for the third year in a row. Officially 35.9 million persons, 12.5 percent of the population, lived below the poverty line in 2003. In 2002 the number was 12.1 percent. Women and children are greatly affected. At the end of 2003, 12.9 percent of all children lived in poverty.

The number of those without health insurance also climbed to 45 million, 15.6 percent of the population. This practical exclusion from the public health system does not only concern blacks and immigrants but increasingly also white US Americans. The reason for this exclusion is the relentless pressure of business to reduce costs – for the health insurance of their employees among others – and increase profits. Only 60.4 percent of wage-earners have health insurance through their employers – the lowest percentage in a decade.

The study gives the lie to the propaganda of the Bush administration about the economic upswing and the “prosperity effect” for the population. In 2003, the year of the supposed boom, the incomes of the lowest fifth of the population declined and another 1.3 million US Americans skidded under the poverty line. Officially the share of Americans living below the poverty line declined to 11.3 percent between 1003 and 2000. Since then, however, the host of the poor grew 4.3 million; the average annual income fell more than $1500 in the same time period.

These official studies must obviously be viewed with a certain caution. Statistical registration in the social realm is especially dubious in the US. The extremely loose registration and social security system leads to social statistics often drawn from surveys instead of reliable figures. In addition the authorities have little interest in allowing the showpiece of neoliberalism to appear in public as the bastion of poverty and misery.

It is all the more remarkable when the increase of poverty and the growing holes of the social net are admitted by the official agencies. Altogether the US study shows that no limits are set to increased poverty in the “land of unlimited possibilities”.