2575 Yet another poverty series

The Wall Street Journal is running another series on poverty. It is very anecdotal (they all are), but inserts statistics, like how the welfare rolls have fallen from 3.9 million in 1997 to 1.9 million in 2005. Or that 4% of the population was "rich" in 1969 and now 18% are rich. (I think that's supposed to be bad, even though the percentage of poor has also decreased since 1969, and most poor people desire to be rich.) The first installment was on hunger, despite a booming economy, and talked about "food-insecure" households. No mention of the millions of illegals with no education or family assets we're forced to absorb into the economy and government social services at the federal and local levels each year.

"Those who play by the rules ought not to be poor" is one of the most stubborn myths about the poor that I've ever read, but it is pervasive in our culture. I've personally been in four of the five quintiles, and we're moving back down because we are retired and living on pensions. But I think I read a U.S. Census site that provided 48 formulas to figure out if we are poor, so somewhere who knows, despite our wealth, we may be poor.

One hard and fast rule is, that if a woman graduates from high school, doesn't have children until she is 21, and marries the father of her children, she and her children have a very small chance of being poor. Women are in control of the poverty statistics in the United States. But does that mean if she's followed this rule she won't ever be poor? Of course not. What if she marries an alcoholic who's a good daddy, but a terrible employee with a spotty work record? What if she is a heavy smoker and develops a cardiovascular condition before she's 35 incurring big medical debts? What if she is obese, or is a hoarder? What if one of the children has ADHD or is mentally ill and she has to miss a lot of work for school counseling? What if her home was in Katrina's path and was underinsured? What if programs are available for her to better herself, but she as no desire to go to school--maybe she hated school?

Want to know why I was never in the top quintile? No desire. Nope. Not once did I want to put out the kind of effort required to be "rich." Now, maybe if I'd had the desire, and failed, I'd have been disappointed. But I thoroughly enjoyed a career as a librarian, being married to an architect, and those two professions are at the bottom for salaries based on years of education. I suppose one of the richest (in salary) librarians is the Librarian of Congress, and he isn't a real Librarian.

You can't sell newspapers with my life story.