The face of poverty
15.1 percent! Portion of U.S. population in poverty in 2010.
22 percent Portion of children under 18 in poverty.
46.2 million Number of people in poverty in 2010.
22,113 dollars The poverty threshold for a family of four.
11,490 dollars The poverty threshold for an individual.
3.2 million Number of people kept out of poverty by unemployment insurance.
20.3 million Number of people kept out of poverty by social security.
Minus 11.3 percent The change in family income for the bottom twenty percent between 2007 and 2010.
Minus 6.6 percent The change in family income for the middle twenty percent between 2007 and 2010.
Minus 4.5 percent The change in family income for the top twenty percent between 2007 and 2010.
6,298 dollars The decline in median working age household income between 2000 and 2010.
5,494 dollars. The decline in African American household income between 2000 and 2010.
4,235 dollars The decline in Hispanic household income from 2000 to 2010.
49.1 million The number of people under 65 without health insurance.
13.6 million The decline in the number of people under 65 with employer sponsored health insurance from 2000 to 2010.
10.5 percentage points The decline in the share of the population with employer sponsored health insurance from 2000 to 2010.
Statistics are an interesting thing but they do not put a true face on the poverty situation in the United States. For every number in the above statistics that we gathered, there is a story. Here are a few of them.
As so many of you who read me regularly know, we have, for the last eleven years, spent a portion of some of our days working and volunteering among those who would be considered by any definition to be poor. They are people in the bottom twenty percent and most of them have little chance of ever escaping that percentile. And, they are, in the main, good and fine citizens of these United States. And some of them have given a portion of their lives and seen other lives snuffed out in service to their country. From world war two through Korea and on down to Vietnam and even Afghanistan and Iraq, they stand among us as members of generations who were drafted or volunteered to help keep us all safe and secure in our lives today.
Next to the Marion Ministerial Alliance stands a 100 unit housing complex that shelters at least 100 souls and so many of them are the old whose social security benefits do not approach that eleven thousand plateau. Many of them are women who are now widowed who served the greatest generation as housewives and helped to raise families who now, sometimes, serve as their lifeline between true poverty and a half way decent life. Many of them have been abandoned by their offspring for various reasons and face each and every lonely day with courage and dignity in the face of odds that would make the most hardened among us cry.
We had lunch yesterday with a group of three who were among the nicest people that we had met recently. They were having trouble coming up with less than 150 dollars to keep their apartment in an old motel on a main artery between two southern Illinois towns. They were kind and wished me well as I tried to direct them toward a place that might help them out of their predicament. We told them that food was available at the Ministerial Alliance Monday through Friday at noon but, like so many others, we will probably never see them again because, like the rent, transportation from their home, such as it is, down to the soup kitchen is a major problem. We who look at 3.25 cent gasoline with a feeling that it is down from some higher plain, would find it hard to understand how hard it is to come up with enough to get anywhere, even if they had a working car.
There are those whose automobiles are their lifeline to the world that we know, but, if they break down, they spend their days looking forlornly out some window, remembering a time that went so fleetingly past. Without transportation, so many windows close to those in the bottom twenty percent. Transportation for these people is an interesting thing. Many of them stand or sit around for hours awaiting an erratic public transit bus to pick them up and take them where they need to go. Acquiring and keeping a car is a major ordeal as they fall victim to the sleazy car dealers who place monitors in the hoods that will turn off the engine if they are as much as forty five minutes late in making their weekly or monthly payments for automobiles that started out with over a hundred thousand miles on them to begin with.
And then there are those who are in the shelters. The one that we have here in Marion, Illinois tries its best to place as many as it can in permanent residences but, at the end of sixty days, it must turn out those that it cannot place. The street can be a very cruel place indeed. We have seen people emerge from storm sewers under highways where they have spend a cold and lonely night. And they have no money for the coffee that we drink in some restaurant as we see them pass by outside. You can always tell a street person because they carry all the belongings in the world with them at all times. And we cannot begin to tell you of the desperation on their face when, while they sleep, someone walks away with the few possessions that they have. The lucky ones have a sleeping bag while the rest just get by.
We just ended a below zero bout here in southern Illinois and I cannot tell you the concern so many of us had for the street people out in weather like this. But so many of them have a pride and a sense of independence that will not let them seek any form of help. Where most of us die in the comfort of a nursing home or our own beds with loved ones gathered around, those on the streets die alone and are found up against some wall someplace, perhaps next to a church, or clogging up some storm drain. Do they even count in any of the statistics mentioned above?
We could go on and on about the situations that we have seen but suffice it to say we think many of you get the picture that we have painted with words here for you. And we would like for you to remember the words from the twenty fifth chapter of Matthew in the Christian Bible which say, in effect, that as you treat the least of these, you treat your maker. And as I so frequently look into the faces of these souls, I know that I am looking into the eyes of God.
IOVHO,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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