Average US Household far from regaining its wealth

[InRareForm]

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-...ing-its-wealth

[TeyshaBlue]

A companion piece to the above.
http://money.usnews.com/money/person...nd-the-numbers



Both illustrate the movement of wealth upwards and not outwards. I know, conventional wisdom dictates that a contemporary conservative should champion this movement. But as a fiscal conservative, I find it intolerable. In the usnews link, the point that seemed to be driven home to me was the notion that the middle class has retracted to the point that, as a class, the single active delineator between poverty and the middle class is: the middle class can barely sustain debt.

[CosmicCowboy]

I'm actually surprised at the average net worth ($539,500)

I thought it would be lower than that.

[boutons_deux]

As the Repugs prepare to cut SNAP, etc in the new farm bill, which cutting is only positive compared to the much worse cutting in Ryan/Repug "official" budgeting, a look at SNAP



http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/20...ml?ref=opinion

[boutons_deux]

Actual US Poverty Twice Official Figure

The official poverty statistic comes from a measure that was created in the mid--well, early 1960s. And it was really put together quickly, and it was kind of considered a placeholder, just 'cause the federal government wanted to have some way to measure poverty and basically took a very low-cost food plan and just multiplied it by three and decided that that was what would account for what a family would need just to be at a poverty-level standard of living. So that has been the measure over all this time, so about 50 years now.

But this official count has been criticized widely by, you know, many poverty experts. And in the mid 1990s, the National Academy of Sciences put together a panel of poverty experts to take a look, take a real close look at this measure and figure out what's wrong with it and how do we improve it. Based on this panel, there were a lot a lot of recommendations. The panel itself said, we know that the official count is wrong and we know that we need to replace it.

Now, two decades later, after that, about 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau, which publishes the official count, came up with a new measure, called the supplemental poverty measure, as a way to correct for the official count. And so, unfortunately, I've taken a look at this measure, and it doesn't look--in terms of the number of people who are--count as poor, it doesn't look a whole lot different than the official count. So, like you said, about 15 percent of the American public is considered poor under the official count. With this new measure, it's only 16 percent.

Now, when I've looked at this measure, I've tried to think about, well, what would people reasonably consider to be poor. And I think it's pretty reasonable to describe being poor as somebody who can't meet their basic needs--food, shelter, their necessary medical care, that sort of thing. And if you actually tally up what the costs are for those things and see what the incomes actually would look like just to meet those basic needs, you're looking at something that's more on the order of two times the official poverty line. So I think that a much more accurate poverty line would be something on the order of double what the official poverty line is. And that would get us to a number of one in three Americans being considered poor as opposed to the current official statistic of 15 percent.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/16693...fficial-figure

[boutons_deux]

Suburbs and the New Geography of Poverty

But a new book, Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, by Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube, flips this equation, suggesting poverty is now concentrated in America's suburbs. Today, while a third of America's poorest live in suburban areas, social service infrastructures haven't adjusted to poverty's new geography.


During the 2000s, for the first time, the number of poor people in major metropolitan suburbs surpassed the number in cities. Between 2000 and 2011, the poor population in suburbs grew by 64 percent—more than twice the rate of growth in cities (29 percent). By 2011, almost 16.4 million residents in suburbia lived below the poverty line, outstripping the poor population in cities by almost 3 million people.

According to the book, the areas with the highest increase in suburban poverty over the last decade are Cape Coral, Fla.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Greensboro-High Point, N.C.; Colorado Springs, Colo. and Atlanta, Georgia.

Why did this happen? Kneebone and Berube point to three main factors: the decline of middle class jobs in major cities particularly in the midwest, and the spread of office and industrial parks on the outskirts of major cities; the decline of older housing stock in cities and the increased use of housing vouchers in the suburbs; and the way that immigrants, seeking lower rents and more easily accessible jobs, are increasingly choosing suburban sprawl over major cities.

Too often, though, low-income people in the suburbs can't find jobs. Or get to the jobs that do exist. As Kneebone and Berube note: "limited or absent public transit in many suburban communities can make it more complicated for low-income suburban workers to overcome the jobs mismatch, especially if they are unable to afford and maintain a reliable car."

http://www.demos.org/blog/suburbs-an...graphy-poverty

[Sportcamper]

I'm actually surprised at the average net worth ($539,500) I thought it would be lower than that.

No way is that number correct...The average household does not have $539,500 in assets...

[Th'Pusher]

No way is that number correct...The average household does not have $539,500 in assets...

It's an average. You have a top fraction of a percentile with the lion's share of the wealth that drags that number up. They are not saying the average person has that net worth.

[Big Empty]

As the Repugs prepare to cut SNAP, etc in the new farm bill, which cutting is only positive compared to the much worse cutting in Ryan/Repug "official" budgeting, a look at SNAP



http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/20...ml?ref=opinion

Wait a mintue, mexicans arnt the leading peeps on food stamps??

[TeyshaBlue]

I'm actually surprised at the average net worth ($539,500)

I thought it would be lower than that.

I would bet that functionally, it's much lower.
I think that's a fair illustrator of the upward movement of wealth. As fewer households gain, the avg net worth, as a viable measurment, becomes skewed.


*edit* Pusher beat me to it.

[CosmicCowboy]

It's an average. You have a top fraction of a percentile with the lion's share of the wealth that drags that number up. They are not saying the average person has that net worth.

a direct quote from the article...

The average household had a net worth of $539,500 at the end of last year, according to a separate paper the St. Louis Fed released Thursday.

[Sportcamper]

It's an average. You have a top fraction of a percentile with the lion's share of the wealth that drags that number up. They are not saying the average person has that net worth.

OK I buy that...The super wealthy Warren, Gates, Turner, really mess up the curve...
I know people that owe 500,000...But very few with assets that high
I found this from CNN...It is more reasonable but I think their numbers are even inflated...

CNN Net Worth Calculator (Age, Income)
The easiest way to see how you stack up is by using CNN Money’s Net Worth calculator. I don’t know how fresh the data is, they only cite Nielsen Claritas as their source (with no date), but it’s good enough for our entertainment purposes. They offer two median net worth charts, one based on your income and one based on your age (the two charts are independent).
Age:
• < 25: $1,475
• 25 – 34: $8,525
• 35 – 44: $51,575
• 45 – 54: $98,350
• 55 – 64: $180,125
• 65+: $232,000
Income:
• < $25K: $1,250
• $25K – $49K: $34,375
• $50K – $74K: $168,500
• $75K – $99K: $301,475
• $100K – $124K: $301,475
• $125K – $149K: $644,100
• $150K+: $1,122,900


http://www.bargaineering.com/article...an-family.html

[boutons_deux]

"In 2010 median net worth in the U.S. hit its lowest point since 1969 at $57,000"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2193764.html

There is no "automatic correction" to the American-dream-killing huge increase in income/wealth inequality. Ineqality results from 35+ years of policy decisions, and only policy decisions can provide a remedy.

The 1% are the true takers, who pay the media like Fox and VRWC stink tanks to spew Orwellian propaganda that Bishop Gecko's 47% are the takers/moochers/frauds/cheats/non-workers.

[TeyshaBlue]

a direct quote from the article...

I think that's just a lazy conflagrant with average net worth.

[clambake]

conglagrant??????

speak english, mother er!!!!!!

[TeyshaBlue]

conglagrant? WTF? Did Creepn hijack my login again?

[clambake]

conglagrant? WTF? Did Creepn hijack my login again?

jack???? log?????

pervert.

[TeyshaBlue]

Seek help.

[clambake]

Seek help.

i got my glock 23 and my bible. what else does one need?

[TeyshaBlue]

You know....93******

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

I'm actually surprised at the average net worth ($539,500)

I thought it would be lower than that.

Average net worth is pretty meaningless it's median net worth that matters.

Put Warren Buffet and 40,000 homeless people in a stadium. The "average" person in that stadium is a millionaire.

[ElNono]

a direct quote from the article...

There's nothing wrong with the article, other than the number isn't really meaningful, because wealth isn't spread evenly.

As many people have pointed out already, you put one billionaire along with a thousand homeless, and the 'average' net worth is a million bucks per person...

[Seventyniner]

http://www.bargaineering.com/article...an-family.html

A quote from that article:

Across all groups, the 2007 median net worth was $120,300 and the mean was $556,300 (guys like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett really mess things up).

So yes, the ~half million number is the mean, and the median was around $120k.

[Wild Cobra]

I laugh any time you all pull a "poverty thread." they always turn into rich bashing, never address root issues, and even the way we define poverty is ed up.

When someone is classed as having poverty, but has cable TV, DVD or blueray, big screen TV's etc...

Really now.

Travel the world if you want to see real poverty. We have the richest poor people in the world. Our poor people are better off then the middle-class of some 1st world nations

[ElNono]

I traveled the world... not sure what that has to do with Americans recouping their wealth post-crisis, tbh...