Joint Center:: DataBank

Trends in Poverty

Persons and Families Living in Poverty

Nationwide, the proportion of the population living below the poverty level declined from 13.3 percent in 1997 (35.6 million people) to 12.7 percent (34.5 million) in 1998. Just over 9 million African Americans were poor in 1998, which meant that their poverty rate of 26.1% remained statistically unchanged from the previous year. During this period, poverty rates declined for non- Hispanic whites (from 8.6% to 8.2%) and for Hispanics (from 27.1% to 25.6%).

The percentage of African American families living below poverty levels (e.g., $16,660 for a family of four and $13,003 for a family of three) also remained unchanged between 1997 and 1998 (at 23.4%) The higher poverty rate for African American families with children (30.5%) also did not change. The poverty rates for families of other racial and ethnic groups also remained unchanged during this period, except for Hispanic families, whose poverty rate dropped from 24.7% to 22.7 %.

Despite this lack of change, it is worth noting that for African Americans the 1997 and 1998 rates were dramatically lower than in 1993, when about 39% of black families with children, 31% of all black families, and 33% of black individuals were poor. From 1996 to 1997 alone, the number of poor African Americans dropped from 9.7 million 9.1 million and the number of poor African American families fell from 2.2 million to 2.0 million ó accounting for more than half of the 0.4 million fewer families who were poor in 1997 than in 1996.

While the 1997 and 1998 poverty figures for African Americans represent historic lows, racial differentials in poverty remain enormous. The recent poverty rates for black individuals and black families with children were about three times higher than the corresponding rates for whites (non- Hispanic), and the rates for black families were nearly four times higher than for white families in all but a few years.

Poor Single Mother and Married -Couple Families with Children

The poverty rates for families maintained by married couples have been strikingly lower than those for families of single mothers. In 1988, among African Americans, the rate for married couples with children in 1998 (8.6%) was only about one fifth of that for single mothers (47.5%). The same pattern held among white non-Hispanics, where married-couple families (4.5%) were a little more than one fifth as likely as single-mother families to be poor (20.7%). Overall, from 1974 to 1998, the poverty rates of single-mother families have been at least three times higher than those of married- couple families with children among both whites and African Americans.

Among African Americans, the poverty rates for families of single mothers in 1997 were their lowest on record, and those of married couples reached their recorded low in 1998. The rates for the families of single black mothers fell 27% from their 1991 peak (60.1%) to 1998 (47.5%). The poverty rates for African American families maintained by married couples with children peaked a year later, in 1992, at 15.4%; between that year and 1998 it dropped by fully 79% to 8.6%. For black single-mother families, the 1991 rate was the highest since 1982, when 63.7% of them were poor. Similarly, for black married-couple families with children, the 1992 rate was the highest since 1983, when 17.2% of them lived in poverty.

African American single mothers were about 2.3 times more likely to maintain poor families than white single mothers (47.5% compared to 20.7%), and have been at least twice as likely to do so since 1974. The proportion of married-couple families with children who are poor has also been at least twice as high among blacks as whites since 1974, except in 1985, 1986, and 1998, when the ratio fell to 1.9 times as high.

References

Prepared by Cassandra Cantave, Melissa Vanouse, and Roderick Harrison for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. September 1999.

Last updated: December 18, 2007