In a sluggish recovery, deepening poverty

What happened

The number of Americans living in poverty in 2009 grew to levels unseen in 15 years, the Census Bureau reported last week. One in seven Americans—43.6 million people, or 14.3 percent of the population—fell below the poverty line, defined as pretax 2009 cash income of $10,830 for individuals and $22,050 for a family of four. The number of Americans without health insurance also rose last year, to 50.7 million from 46.3 million. The Census report underscored the findings of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a panel of economists that determines when recessions officially begin and end. The NBER said this week that the Great Recession ended in June 2009, but that the economy’s growth since then has been slow, fitful, and feeble.

Poverty levels would have surged even higher, government economists said, but for aid provided in the stimulus bill, expanded unemployment insurance, and the phenomenon of hundreds of thousands of unemployed people moving in with more prosperous family members. Nearly 7 million jobs vanished during the recession, and middle-class wages stagnated or declined. “It’s not a pretty picture at all for the typical American household,” said Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz. “Only families headed by people with professional degrees and Ph.D.s have withstood the recession without large losses in earnings.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What the editorials said

So this is what comes of President Obama’s efforts to reduce economic inequality, said The Wall Street Journal. “More of us are poor,” and inequality has widened. Yet “the president wants to plow ahead with the same policies that aren’t reducing poverty.” How much more evidence do we need that massive government intervention in the private sector retards rapid economic growth—the only sure route to reducing poverty? Instead of “rebuilding America as an economic powerhouse,” Obama and Congress both offer only “short-term fixes that may pay political dividends” and little else, said the New York Daily News. You call this leadership?

Yes, actually, said The Philadelphia Inquirer. “The scope of the problem could have been even worse without government intervention.” Thanks to unemployment-insurance extensions pushed by Obama and passed by congressional Democrats, some 3 million Americans managed to stay above the poverty line last year. And an emergency jobs program has helped employers in 37 states expand hiring despite a brutal recession. Such successes argue for the government doing even more—yet Republicans want Washington to do less.

What the columnists said

It may take “a full-blown depression” before politicians react constructively to this “economic disaster,” said Bob Herbert in The New York Times. One in five American children—15 million kids—now live in poverty, and “millions more are teetering on the edge.” Meanwhile, “the gap between the wealthiest 5 percent of citizens and the poorest 5 percent only grew wider,” said Dan Rodricks in the Baltimore Sun. Yet the moment someone dares point that out, “Republicans throw the ‘class warfare’ flag.”

Rather than score rhetorical points, Republicans could help themselves—and the country—by presenting “a common-sense agenda to fight poverty,” said John Feehery in TheHill.com. Democrats simply want to hand out more relief checks, which only “give people an incentive to stay where they are.” Republicans emphasize personal responsibility; stable, two-parent families; and strong incentives to move from welfare to work—all of which have been proved to help people move from poverty into the middle class. Why aren’t Republicans shouting this news from the rooftops?

Don’t blame “big government” for this mess, said Jeff Madrick in HuffingtonPost.com. During the Bush years, “private enterprise was given an utterly free hand.” Republicans dismantled government regulation, leaving banks free to take ever-crazier gambles until the entire financial system blew up. GOP tax cuts failed to encourage businesses to hire or invest. Yet Republicans’ only response to this crisis is to call for more tax cuts and to trash the stimulus and other Democratic policies, which prevented a complete economic collapse. That’s what you call chutzpah.