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Antwort in : /alt/activism/d Absender : odin@atlantic.net (The Golem) Betreff : Broken Lives: Facts About Poverty Datum : Do 18.06.98, 00:57 (erhalten: 19.06.98) Groesse : 15366 Bytes ----------------------------------------------------------------------
BROKEN DREAMS - BROKEN LIVES
BASIC FACTS ABOUT WEALTH AND POVERTY
* - "Between 1983 and 1989 the top 20% of wealth holders received
99% of the total gain in marketable wealth, while the bottom 80%
of the population got only 1%" (Edward N. Wolff, "How the Pie is
Sliced," 1995).
* - "The combined wealth of the top 1 percent of U.S. families is
about the same as that of the entire bottom 95 percent" (Holly
Sklar, Jobs, Income, and Work: Ruinous Trends, Urgent
Alternatives, 1995, p. 9).
* - "The top 0.5% of wealth holders still own 32% of stocks - double
the 16% share held by the bottom 90%. Bond ownership is even more
top-heavy. The top 0.5% holds 46% of the total, while the bottom
90% holds just 10%" (Unpublished Federal Reserve technical paper,
analyzed by Left Business Observer, July 17, 1997).
* - "The United States is the richest country on the planet yet it
has the greatest income disparity.... Sixty percent of all U.S.
jobs created since 1979 pay less than $7,000 a year" (Fian Fact
Sheet, Welfare by Corporations is Corporate Welfare,
http://www.foodfirst.org/corpwell.htm) .
* - "Over one in nine persons in the labor force during 1993 were
living below the poverty line. Of these nearly 12 million workers,
70 percent (8.22 million workers) fit the category of working
poor" (Denny Braun, The Rich Get Richer, 2nd ed. 1997, p. 238.
Based on BLS data).
* - "The wages of the average non-college-educated male fell 10.1%
from 1979 to 1989 and another 7.2% between 1989 and 1995" (The
State of Working America 1996-97, Economic Policy Institute,
1996).
* - "The wages of a young male high school graduate dropped 21.8% in
the 1980s and another 6.9% in the 1989-95 period" (Ibid).
* - "A young female high school graduate earned 18.9% less in 1995
than in 1979" (Ibid).
* - "While 10.3% of Hispanic families were unemployed in 1996, 19.0%
were under-employed" (J. Bernstein, "The Challenge of Moving from
Welfare to Work," Economic Policy Institute, 1997).
* - "Among blacks 16-25, about 35% were under-employed in 1996"
(Ibid).
* - "For most families, increases in net income have come from more
hours of work, not increases in hourly pay" (Congressional Study:
"Families on a Treadmill: Work and Income in the 1980s," January
17, 1992).
* - "Real hourly pay of wives increased for most families, but for
60 percent of families, the decline in hourly pay of husbands was
greater than the increase in wives' hourly pay" (Ibid).
* - The total wages of all people who earned less than $50,000 a
year - about 85% of Americans - increased an average of 2 percent
a year from 1980 to 1989, which did not even keep pace with
inflation. By contrast, the total wages of all millionaires shot
up 243 percent a year (Internal Revenue Service).
* - "The cost of a college education rose more than 70% for private
schools between the years 1977-1993, and more than 50% for public
schools" (U.S. Center for Educational Staistics; Figures are
inflation-adjusted).
* - "Of the 82 women serving in statewide elective executive
positions, 3 (3.7%) are women of color" (Center for the American
Woman and Politics, 1998).
* - Percent of revenues for public elementary and secondary schools
from the federal level averaged 7.0% between 1970-71 and 1994-95
(NCES, "Mini-Digest of Education Statistics," 1997, p.51).
* - More than 50% of today's college students will graduate in debt
(National Association of Graduate-Professional Students).
* - Rate of tuition increases before 1978 was 1% below the inflation
rate; since 1978 the rate has been more than twice the inflation
rate (Ibid).
* - The student loan default rate in 1977 was 11%; in 1992 it was
22% (Ibid).
* - American students since 1990 have borrowed as much as the total
volume for all of the 1960s, '70s and 80s combined (The Education
Resources Institute, "College Debt and the American Family,"
1995).
* - "Gaps in the academic performance of black and white students
appear as early as age 9 and persist through age 17" (National
Center for Education Statistics, "The Educational Progress of
Black Students," 1995, p. 3>.
* - "Hispanic children start elementary school with less preschool
experience than white children, and this gap has widened over
time" (NCES, "The Educational Progress of Hispanic Students,"
1995, p. 2).
* - "Bankruptcies increased by 19 percent in 1997 to a record high
of 1.4 million filings" (American Bankruptcy Institute, 1998).
* - "11.3 million children age 18 and under are uninsured - the
largest number ever reported by the Census Bureau" (Children's
Defense Fund, March 14, 1998).
* - "Approximately 13.6 million children under age 12 in the United
States - 29 percent - live in families that must cope with hunger
or the risk of hunger during some part of one or more months of
the previous year" (Community Childhood Hunger Identification
Project).
* - "33.1% of all African Americans, 30.6% of Latinos and 18.8% of
other non-whites live in poverty, as compared to 9.9% of White
residents" (Cynthia Taeber, The Statistical Handbook on Women in
America, 1996, p. 145).
* - Hunger in the U.S. has increased by 50% since 1985 (Center on
Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy, Tufts University, 1993).
* - Between 20 and 30 million Americans suffer from hunger
(Congressional Hunger Center, 1995).
* - Approximately 20% of American adults do not have a high school
diploma (U.S. Census Bureau, 1990).
* - "Each year, almost 5,000 young people, ages 15 to 24, kill
themselves. The rate of suicide for this age group has nearly
tripled since 1960" (National Mental Health Association, 1997).
* - Over 1.4 billion people in the world live in abject poverty,
surviving on less than $1 US a day. Another 3.3 billion people
live in extreme poverty (United Nations Human Development Report,
1997).
* - By 1996, 36.5 million Americans lived in poverty (U.S. Bureau of
the Census, 1997a).
* - Despite its recent increase, the minimum wage remains 15% below
its average purchasing power in the 1970s, after adjusting for
inflation (Kaufman, 1997).
* - In 1996, approximately 41.7 million Americans had no health
insurance (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1997b). Another 40 million
had only limited coverage.
* - The average income of families in the middle fifth of the income
distribution fell in 25 states between the late 1970s and the
mid-1990s" (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Pulling Apart:
A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends, December 16, 1997,
http://www.cbpp.org/pa-1test.htm).
* - White, black and Latina women, respectively, earn 75, 65 and 56
percent of white male wages (The International Association of
Machinists and Aerospace Workers, 1996).
* - Ninety-six percent of top executives are men (Ibid).
* - "Women make up nearly 70% of the world's poor and more than 65%
of the illiterate" (International Labour Organization, "Women
Swell Ranks of Working Poor," 1996).
* - "In industrialized countries, much of the growth in women's
labour force participation has been in part-time jobs. Women make
up between 65% and 90% of all part-timers in OECD countries"
(Ibid).
* - "Everywhere, women are paid less than men, and there is no
indication that this will change soon. The majority of women
continue to earn on average about three-fourths of the male wage
outside of the agricultural sector" (Ibid).
* - "In 1978, corporate CEOs, or chief executive officers, were paid
60 times what the average worker earned. By 1995, CEOs had
increased their pay to 173 times the average worker's income"
(Abid Aslam, U.S. Rich Benefit at the Expense of the Poor, Third
World Network).
* - Percentage of persons below the poverty level was 12.6% in 1970,
13.0% in 1980, 13.5% in 1990, and 14.5% in 1994 (U.S. Census
Bureau, Current Population Reports, Series P-60, No. 188, 1995).
* - "In the United States, where overall violent crime against women
has been growing for the past two decades, a woman is physically
abused by her intimate partner every nine seconds" (UNICEF, The
Progress of Nations, 1997).
* - "The US, with just 5 times the population of Italy, has 150
times more children in detention" (Ibid).
* - Share of global income going to richest 20% and poorest 20% of
world's population:
year/share richest 20%-share poorest 20%-ratio rich/poor
1960 70.2% 2.3% 30 to 1 1970 73.9% 2.3% 32 to 1 1980 76.3% 1.7% 45 to 1 1989 82.7% 1.4% 59 to 1
[UN, Human Development Report, 1992]
* - The U.S. has the highest infant mortality, AIDS, road accident,
pesticide consumption, homicide, reported rapes, imprisonment and
hazardous waste production rates among Switzerland, Japan, Sweden,
Denmark, Norway, Germany, Austria, France, Finland and Canada (The
World Bank, World Development Report, 1994 and UN, Human
Development Report, 1994).
- Military Budgets, 1996/97 ($billions) U.S. $260 Germany $42 Russia $82 U.K. $34 Japan $50 China $32 France $48 Italy $20
[The International Institute for Strategic Studies: The Military Balance,
1996/97]
* - "Between 1979 and 1994, the total number of unemployed in the G7
- Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and the
United States - rose from 13 million to almost 24 million, along
with 4 million unemployed who have stopped looking for work, and
15 million who work part-time but would rather work full-time"
(International labour Organization, 1996).
* - "Since 1990, an additional 300 million people are making do
without decent sanitation" (UNICEF, The Progress of Nations,
1997).
_____________________________________________________________
"The degree to which one is sinsitive to other people's suffering, to
another's humanity, is the index of one's own humanity."
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
_____________________________________________________________
Index of Welfare-Workfare-State Archives
Last Modified: July 1998