Are we possibly wrong regarding poverty rates?

2014-02-27T19:52:13+00:00

Abject poverty vs. the Poverty Line...

Or put another way, a man is more likley to be living on the streets and shelters while a woman will be in apartment on food stamps with heat, a bed, and running water. She is "poor" and he is "poor" and both of them "live in poverty".

SporkTornado · 2014-02-27T19:46:11+00:00

The overwhelming majority of homeless people are men. the discrepancy between the rates of homelessness and poverty in genders is because a woman in poverty is more likely to be receive support from the system and there for less likely to wind up homeless. while men who find themselves in poverty, receive much less assistance from the system and are therefor mor likely to end up homeless. This would indicate a need to increase the number of men's shelters.

ILoveHate · 2014-02-27T20:02:50+00:00

Not sure, but one thing I don't think these numbers show is the men who have to pay child support/alimony. On paper they might look like earning something like $20-30,000 a year and aren't in poverty. While the ex wife might earn $10,000 a year, have 2 kids and look like she's in poverty. But once the wealth is transferred from him to her, she might be fairly well off while he's in poverty.

Thus on paper she's in poverty and he isn't, but in reality he's giving her money and now he's the one in poverty.

But that being said, there are plenty of single moms out there, so I wouldn't be surprised.

CaptSnap · 2014-02-28T00:42:23+00:00

If we say the bottom 20% then we are factually incorrect. If we say the bottom 5% then we are correct.

This is kind of a loaded question and I think alot of these other responses are half-baked and miss the point.

Ill start with the populations they are excluding: (emphasis mine from your link) Now they arent excluding these people on purpose they are excluding them because their survey design calls people on the telephone to ask them the survey questions and these people dont have phones. So when someone says they are in "poverty" what they mean is "poor but not so poor that they dont have telephone service" thats a pretty big caveat. I want to point it out because its worth keeping in mind BUT I dont think the surveyors were trying to be duplicitious they were just trying to get what information they can on a budget.

The sample universe for the basic CPS consists of the resident civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States. People in institutions, such as prisons, long-term care hospitals, and nursing homes, are not eligible to be interviewed in the CPS. Students living in dormitories are included in the estimates only if information about them is reported in an interview at their parents’ home. Since the CPS is a household survey, persons who are homeless and not living in shelters are not included in the sample.

In 2009 the DoJ reported that there were 1,500,278 male prisoners and 113,462 female prisoners or about 92.4% of this population are men.

ON table 3 of your source you get 20,656,000 men are in poverty and 25,840,000 women are in poverty. 20.6 million men out 152 million total men being the 13.6% figure you quoted. If you add the number of men incarcerated (assuming they would qualify as being in poverty which I think is a pretty safe assumption) then you 22,156,278 which pushes the stat up to 14.6% for men and 16.36% for women.

SO even if you brought up prisoners its just a fart in a whirlwind. However, that doesnt mean men arent predominantly incarcerated because thats true. Its just not true to say more men are in the bottom 20% and then go on about how its still true because your study doesnt account for prisoners. At this rung thats even lower than the one in your study, you do find more men.

The homeless population is another example. Now this is a really sticky statistical mess here because we arent sure how many people are homeless because they dont have phones and it costs alot of money to actually find out....and then when you do, you just spent all that money digging up a major problem that no one wants to deal with. So these next set of numbers should be taken with a bigger grain of salt:

The Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress is put out every year by the US dept of Housing and Urban Dev and they say there are only 610,000 homeless people in the US. About 67% are men which is 408k and 202k for women, this brings our percentages up to 14.8% for men and about the same for women 16.4%.

So again...here we are with a population that has sunk so low that its hard to even account and you still find mainly men. This part of the MRA agendy is true. And my only beef with your study is it has to exclude these people and I feel thats a bit of a disservice because these are the poorest of the poor.

My point from all that is there are basically two groups here that youre lumping together, those whom society has all but forgotten or tried to forget such that they dont even have phones and then a group just right above them that are in poverty but do have an address with a phone. It is this second group that your study looks at. So what youre really asking is why are there more women than men in this second group and the answer is they are caught by a safety net because society tries to keep them from falling into the truely dark places where it doesnt mind men falling. Now some part of that is because they are women but really its because they are women with children.

Almost 73% of single parents are mothers source. Single parents with children are held to a different standard of poverty than parents without children. SIngle parents with children get state help (its not much and its not enough but its there). Single families (especially single mothers) get priorities at shelters, things like that. Women's shelters get funded etc. HOWEVER even with all this the number of homeless women are rising.

In my personal opinion, poverty is not a GENDERED struggle. Right now more men are on the very bottom rungs (prison and homeless) but women are rushing fast to join them. This is a class struggle, to me. But still youre right we need to be factually correct and I hope I added to that point. As an MRA we dont want to be blind to the struggle women have raising kids on their own; on the other hand, I feel some of this burden could be ameliorated with male reproductive rights and greater custody for dads. At these income levels I think we're going to see alot of displaced fathers simply because they cant afford the child support.

From here

According to a California study, 76% of the $14.4 billion in child support arrears in California has been attributed to "obligors" who lack the ability to pay. In California, the "deadbeat" parents had a median annual income of $6349, arrears of $9447, ongoing support of $300 per month.

I think this injustice effects not just the "deadbeat" but also the mother and child in that it perpetuates a cycle of poverty. The deadbeat will end up in jail and may never be employable again while the mother and child are left out.

tldr; there are more men in the worst throes of poverty (most homeless and incarcerated are men), there are slightly more women in the next rung of poverty (especially single mothers)..the rung that still has a phone. Many of the issues surrounding poverty are MRA issues, many of them are just plain class war issues.

typhonblue · 2014-02-28T00:08:01+00:00

A lot of government benefits don't count towards a household income.

Also men who are institutionalized, in prison, homeless or... you know... dead don't count either.

Because it's harder for men to get government or social assistance when poor and being poor is more dangerous for them... they tend to die more often when poor whereas women can survive in "poverty" far longer. If poor women live to 75 and poor men tend to die at the average age of 50, there are going to be a lot more poor women.

Eulabeia · 2014-02-28T01:44:34+00:00

If you actually read the whole thing here, it says this:

The CPS is a household survey primarily used to collect employment data. The sample universe for the basic CPS consists of the resident civilian non-institutionalized population of the United States. People in institutions, such as prisons, long-term care hospitals, and nursing homes, are not eligible to be interviewed in the CPS. Students living in dormitories are included in the estimates only if information about them is reported in an interview at their parents’ home. Since the CPS is a household survey, persons who are homeless and not living in shelters are not included in the sample. The sample universe for the CPS ASEC is slightly larger than that of the basic CPS since it includes military personnel who live in a household with at least one other civilian adult, regardless of whether they live off post or on post. All other Armed Forces are excluded.

So basically it seems to exclude almost every demographic that is mostly males. The biggest one being prisoners which is a few million, then homeless which is about half a million. Both those groups are 80-90% men. Another pathetic misleading feminist piece of propaganda parroted by feminists in an attempt to win the oppression Olympics.

Also like others are saying, these stats only really count reported income from employment. So alimony and child support aren't included, support from the state isn't included, help from friends/family/boyfriend isn't included, money from working under the table stripping/prostituting/camshowing isn't included. It really doesn't say much about the average standard of living. The term of being under the poverty line is supposed to conjure up an image of living in like some dilapidated apartment in the ghetto with very little money to spend for recreation, but really that seems as if it would be rare for women and much more common for men even when they're both technically in poverty.

TheCameraLady · 2014-02-27T19:48:53+00:00

"We"?

Anyways, most of the homeless people are men, I think that's the angle taken.

In 2012, 6.3 percent of married-couple families, 30.9 percent of families with a female householder and 16.4 percent of families with a male householder lived in poverty.

That 30,9% is single mothers I assume?

rogerwatersbitch · 2014-02-27T19:54:09+00:00

There are more poor women than men, no doubt...but they also receive much more help than males...females tend to end up in welfare (especially if they have families),guys just end up on the street.

ThePigmanAgain · 2014-02-27T22:30:31+00:00

Most of the people i see living on the street are men. Doesn't get any poorer than that.

rightsbot · 2014-02-27T19:36:17+00:00

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drewtam · 2014-02-28T00:13:16+00:00

Also, be careful of poverty measures pre-dole vs post dole. US poverty post-dole is much much smaller than the typically reported pre-dole numbers. The rest of the world often reports post-dole numbers.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5tlinnN9fZQ/Uju3PbmbNMI/AAAAAAAAELg/bsF9QXTaowU/s1600/poverty+2.jpg

That said, I would expect that male poverty post-dole is a far larger percent of poverty since we don't often qualify for the typical benefits (SNAP, SSI, etc) at the rates women do. But I haven't done the research to know.

giegerwasright · 2014-02-28T12:50:26+00:00

One thing that isn't considered is that women tend to be given things by other people rather regularly. When mommy and daddy pay your rent, that doesn't get listed under income. All those free meals and gifts that guys who want their attention pay for? Not listed under income. All the freebies that society offers them? Not listed under income.

A telling factor is the idea that women control more than 80% of spending power. This means that men control less than 20%. That's poverty.

Samurai007_ · 2014-02-28T17:10:07+00:00

Those numbers don't count transfer payments like alimony, child support, etc. So if a man earns $20,000 a year and has to give $10,000 to his ex-wife and kids, he's counted as if he kept the whole $20,000, and she's not counted as getting $10,000 from him.

2014-02-27T23:32:41+00:00

Taranto did a good piece on this, and it would appear that while more women live in poverty, this is because more men die in poverty, not to mention those women who choose to have children they cannot afford, effectively choosing poverty of their own free will.

7hunderpants · 2014-02-27T23:50:11+00:00

Troll post.

Title	Are we possibly wrong regarding poverty rates?
Author	TheCameraLady
Upvotes	30
Comments	21
Date	February 27, 2014 7:32 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/mensrights/comments/1z4042/are-we-possibly-wrong-regarding-poverty-rates/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/are-we-possibly-wrong-regarding-poverty-rates.1614996 https://theredarchive.com/post/1614996

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