Misreading the Poverty Data

“In his Sept. 5 op-ed, ” Importing Poverty,” Robert J. Samuelson assailed the Census Bureau, the American Enterprise Institute, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the media for missing what he views as the core of the poverty story. When discussing the figures that the Census Bureau released Aug. 28, we all failed, he said, to explain that poverty “is increasingly a problem associated with immigration,” driven by the large numbers of poor Hispanics entering the country.

But a careful look at the data does not support Samuelson’s narrow view of how immigrants in general, and Hispanic immigrants in particular, affect poverty trends.

The poverty rate in 2006 was 12.3 percent. If immigration had not increased, and immigrants and their family members comprised the same share of the population in 2006 as in 1993 (the first year for which these Census Bureau data are available), the poverty rate would be nearly the same, about 12 percent.”

Stumble it! | |

Other posts that may interest you

Poverty higher for area Hispanics. Alabama

Poverty, Hispanic rates increase in Decatur, Alabama

NCLR and AECF Make Puerto Rico’s Children Count in New Report on Child Well-Being

Poverty drives Mexicans to seek new lives in U.S.

Study: Poverty uneven within Latino populations

Blogante Headlines for Tuesday - September 18th, 2007

Immigrants finding Nevada a great place for new start

Hacker gets into Chilean government files, leaks personal data to Internet - (6 million of them)

Study by Sacramento State University Professor Shows Differences in Poverty Rates for Hispanics

Immigration, poverty linked