How do you define poverty? Who is poor exactly?

Extreme poverty is the complete lack of the means to meet one’s basic needs such as Food, Clothing, and Shelter.
A person is considered poor if his income falls below the given minimum level .
I suspect that a person who works in finance would define poverty/poor as living below the minimum poverty threshold as set by an agency/government etc
A vagrant is the poorest destitute person who has hit the lowest .

He actually said that definition had to do with what percentage the monthly spending on food is. Some ratio I forget. Make sense to anyone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_poverty
This link shows how to measure poverty
note: Absolute vs Relative Poverty paragraph

Yes the percentage of your income dedicated to feeding your family is one measure of relative poverty. But the 2 indelible certainties concerning rising poverty rates in America are that for those concerned, falling to levels qualifying for governmental assistance of any sort is an infallible indicator that your trip on the poverty trolley is most assuredly one way. The trap doors have slammed. Too little, too late, and designed to assure that this is the case.

The income amount would be different in different cities. You can’t just look at income, you have to look at assets and savings too.

Assuming little to no savings, the ability to afford food and shelter changes depending on how many dependents you have.

I think mostly I don’t use a specific number, but more like I know it when I see it. If where you live is in a poor area, and you can only afford food, shelter, and transportation, and you live check to check, then you are poor. Even if you have an extra, let’s say, $3k a year where part goes to savings, part clothing, and part to emergencies, that’s still poverty.

My aunt was poor in her final years, but thank goodness NYC has rent stabilization to help people who have lived in the same apartment a long time, and also help to subsidize rent for the poor. So, she could continue to live in her apartment, in a good area, but otherwise she lived basically check to check on social security, and additionally burned through about $7k of savings a year to afford bare minimum. She didn’t have a cell phone, but she did have an iPad and cable TV. She almost never used any form of transportation. I think being able to live in a nice place that’s relatively safe is such a big deal.

Lots of people where I live are check to check in their retirement, but the check is social security (old age SS) they have Medicare, their house is paid off, and they live in a nice place. They are poor, but the guaranteed income and healthcare takes a lot of the stress away from being poor, and I think that’s a really big deal. Not having to work, living in a nice place, and not having to worry too much about financial ruin if they have a health event.

Some people function like the poor even though they make a decent income. They spend all their money as soon as it comes in, even though they could reasonably be saving some. The poor have no choice in the matter, unlike someone who is earning a middle class income or higher. Being one paycheck away from ruin is cash poor. You can make $10k a week and be this type of poor. I don’t consider that person poor, but I’m frustrated (maybe translate that to judging) he/she is a step away from being poor if he loses his job.

Right now my husband feels poor, because of the lack of money coming in, even though we have a lot of savings. We are in our early 50’s. If we had the same money and were 65 or older, he would feel rich. Poor can be a state of mind and is situational, but at the lowest levels there is objectively poor, where the person is poor no matter how you look at it because there is little to no income or savings or assets.

When I first started doing Child Protective work, I went to the homes of people who had no money, lived in crappy apartments, had no car, just totally depressing. When I was young, I had a friend who lived in a housing project. She had no phone. I was about sixteen when I met her, and everyone I knew had phones in their houses at the time. It was astounding to me that she had no home phone. They also had no car and had almost no food in the apartment until the mom got paid once a week, and then the mom would buy cold cuts and white bread.

To me, people like that are poor. I would find living like that to be depressing.

I know there are people that live in decent houses but need to have two people working and one needs at least two jobs in order to pay the big mortgage. To me, those people did something foolish by buying a house that puts them in the poorhouse, but they’re not really poor.

I have a good job and a good car and I can take nice trips and stuff, and in my family I’m the poor one because they’re all pretty affluent. They probably think of me as somewhat poor and they couldn’t imagine being me because my surroundings aren’t posh, I don’t fly back and forth to Europe several times a year and I don’t have wealth the way they have wealth. So I am guessing it’s all relative.

@joeschmo In America you can’t really use % of food as a yardstick. I was super poor for several years in the 90s, but we had more food than we knew what to do with thanks to food stamps.
Also, different people eat different amounts of food, and different kinds.

Also, IMO, if you consider trasbags, paper towels, sandwich bags and foil to be luxuries that you don’t have very often, that’s pretty poor here in America.

@Dutchess_III If you need food stamps to eat, then you aren’t really affording the food, the government is.

You are poor when lack of money interferes negatively with your day to day life. You can be loaded and still poor if the lack of wealth interferes with your day to day activities.

@JLeslie I didn’t say anything about personally affording food, and I am well aware of who provided the food stamps and who paid for them.
I was responding to the OP’s first comment ”He actually said that definition had to do with what percentage the monthly spending on food is. Some ratio I forget.”
That ratio / percentage didn’t apply in my case because I didn’t have to spend a dime on food. For the majority of poor Americans it doesn’t apply.

^^Then it’s like you were spending 100% on food. Meaning if you were buying your food you would have no money left for anything else. Without food you die in a week or less. Food is the most important thing, even if you are sleeping under the stars. Unless it’s freezing out, that’s a different story. The point is if you can’t afford any food you’re poor.

I have no idea where you are trying to go now @JLeslie.
But BTW you can live much longer than a week without food. Hell I went on a 5 day fast as a teenager for the hell of it. I was fine. You’re thinking of water. A week without water would kill you.
On my own I could have bought potatoes, rice, beans, milk, flour, Cornflakes. The bare minimum. As it is, I didnt have to worry about it because with food stamps I could buy crab legs and steak.

@Dutchess_III Water is much faster, usually less than 5 days. That doesn’t matter.

The point is if you had had no government assistance can you afford food? What are you paying for? Shelter? Food? If you’re getting no assistance then what? If you can’t cover those things then you’re poor, because they are basic necessities. I don’t know why that’s hard to understand. You couldn’t afford food, the government was paying for it. If you think food stamps is the same as someone who is earning enough to pay for food then I won’t be able to explain it to you. I’m assuming you were below the poverty line and that’s why you were receiving food stamps. You were eating better than me. I’m not sure what to think of that.

I paid my rent, my utilities, my phone bill, my gas money, plus all non food items for myself and 4 kids, such as toilet paper, tampex, cleaners, toothpaste, clothes, etc.
As I said above things like foil, trash bags, paper towels were a luxury we lived without.
In 1994 I filed taxes on $9,000. 1995 was $13,000 I think.
WHAT is your point???

@Dutchess_III I don’t have a problem. I don’t have a problem with you getting food stamps either, although I did question how much money you received for food stamps, but that’s not important to this question.

How much did food cost per week, and how much income did you make in a week without the assistance? Then you get the percentage.

Or, you can even include the assistance as part of your total income, and then do the numbers and use that percent.

Both calculations are useful I would think.

I didn’t say you had a problem. I asked what your point is and I still don’t understand what it is.

I’ll give you the numbers and you can figure it all out, whatever “it’ is, if you think it’s that important.

Income $10,000 gross a year.

4 dependants under the age of 18. No child support and no way to sue for it. I couldn’t afford a lawyer.

$600 a month in food stamps…easily twice as much as I needed.

Kids had state health insurance, I had none.

I don’t know why any of that matters but knock yourself out.

@Dutchess if you make $10k and need just $300 a month for your whole grocery bill then the math is:

10,000/12=834. 300 is 36% of your income was needed for food.

I have no point except that it is possible to do the math.

Of course it’s possible to do the math, but I have absolutely no need to. It has nothing to do with the question because I didn’t pay for the food therefore 0% of my personal income went for food. If I HAD bought my own food that $300 would have been a LOT less, more like $150. We would have eaten a lot of rice and potatoes, which is what we did before I even discovered food stamps.
Why on earth are you making this so complicated?

You are the one who said you can’t use cost of food as a yard stick because of food stamps.

Forget it. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care about the food calculation. Like I said, generally, without any sort of calculations people know poor when it’s in front of them, or when it’s happening to them. Although, I wouldn’t say one can’t always tell just at a glance. Many people live way below their means, but have a ton of savings.

You really thought that meant I couldn’t do the math??

I know you can do the math, I know you can figure out a percentage if that’s what you mean.

I used to get the dirtiest looks when I used my food stamps, especially if I was professionally dressed for teaching.

Ladies just get a room already.

There is one episode that i still recall that had a powerful effect on me. I was in another interminable line at a supermarket checkout counter with 2 impatient dowager looking women apparently accustomed to the maid doing the shopping in line behind me. At the checkstand across from us, a black man pulled out his wallet but apparently couldn’t open it, when the stunning blonde woman next to him gently took the wallet opened it and retrieved some food stamps, and passed them to the cashier. I dont know how the battle axes (who were probably younger than I am now) even recognized a food stamp, but it didn’t prohibit one of them from belllowing. “And just WHAT is suuposed to be the matter with HIM?” The blonde flushed beet red. I just stared at my shoes, then looked up to watch the man limp struggling toward the door with the blonde in front running interference with the groceries

Jesus. People are unreal.

Poverty, in this day and age, is ironically sad and cruel. The richest countries with the most billionaires allowing people to live on the streets in wintertime, in horrid conditions. This makes me cry, daily. Sometimes, Don Quixote style, I want to fight the powers, clothe, shelter and of course feed the homebound… I want to fight for better wages housing conditions for the “working poor”... but then reality sets in and I go my way battling my own private wars, surviving, existing; envious of those historically, who have put society and humankind BEFORE their own needs and wants.

I, am not strong nor capable enough. I wish I were.

My Mom used to blurt shit out like that, without thinking. She wasn’t even a mean, hateful person. She just did NOT understand how it could hurt someone some one.
She was like that her whole life, but as she started get Alzheimer’s it got even worse.

Compared to what you are describing @joeschmo, I wasn’t poor! Not really. I was living on the edge for sure, though.

@Dutchess_lll I am sorry if I offended you. To which blurted shit are you referring to?

Mine (I think)

Sorry..I was referring to @stanleybmanly‘s story of that rude old lady. My bad for not being specific.

Oh, ok.

Sorry.

You’re fine.

Does your avatar mean you have a knock down dead Trump impersonation?

Lol stanley. It means I have chosen Alec B. to be my avatar de jour as it will be his birthday in two days.

I have decided to have some fun and look up famous birthdays, changing my avatar to people I find interesting, important or historically significant. Just for fun, with the added bonus of trivia learned which otherwise might not have been. :-)

My birthday is July 24th!

For now, I am going with men only. Should this change, I will gladly use your real headshot. with proof of being famous.

~

OK. Me Farrah?

Is that you? Are you famous?

I was told constantly I looked like Farrah Fawcett, so I’m sorta kinda famous.

Perhaps you do, however, I have strict guidelines. You must actually be famous, not a celebrity look-alike.

I shall stay with famous men for now.

Sorry.

Better than Farah!

Lol! I was taller and had better boobs!

That is one “stop the traffic” photo, and will almost certainly displace my current image of Brownback’s mug at the mention of Kansas!

@Dutchess_lll apropos better boobs, pics or it never happened.

Stop it! There’s already too much excitement here! Or is that just your Trump impersonation?

;-)

LOLLL!!

@Dutchess_III I know people who had government assistance for their school lunch, and they said they felt awful, because I guess back then you could tell by how they paid. I don’t remember anything like that, I probably just didn’t pay attention. Now, it’s so much better than using actual stamps, which was so obvious to everyone around. Thank goodness that changed so people who need help don’t have to worry about being judged. No one ever knows what a stranger is dealing with, no one should be judging.

Yeah.Well. Okay.

My kids got free breakfast and lunches. The government just poured food at us. It was a little wierd and pretty ridiculous. I really could have used help in other areas.

Sorry @joeschmo! I’m a prude. Ask anyone here. :)

@Dutchess_III My aunt really need food stamps, and they only gave her about $100 a month. She truly could not live on her income, and she was severely disabled. My sister believes she was not treated fairly.

I could buy plenty of food for myself for a month with $100.

She lived in NYC, so maybe it’s more expensive. I probably spend $250—$300 a month for food for myself from the grocery store. I haven’t tracked it in a while. I don’t eat out much though. I could cut the dollar amount back if I needed to.

Well there were 5 of us. We got $600. That’s about $120 each. I only spent about $300.
I don’t think your aunt was cheated. Is she overweight?

100 dollars a month, NYC, definitely something was miscalculated. Working for the government, I know you should always ask for an appeal.

Well when there are no kids involved don’t the states get pretty stingy @jca2? (And what happened to jca1?)

@jca2 I should have asked you about it. My sister was really annoyed. I don’t remember if she tried to do something about it. In the end it basically came out of my inheritance. She had put approximately $50k in my name, all done above board, Medicaid knew, and I paid all of her bills the last 5 years of her life. Her SS didn’t cover all of her expenses, so I paid out of her savings that were in my name. When she died I think I had about $10k left. I don’t care about the inheritance if the money had been used to bring her some happiness, but it basically was just necessities. That’s not worded right. It’s not the inheritance for me, but she worried about every penny, because she reasonably could have completely run out of money. A couple of hundred more for food would have reduced the worry.

@Dutchess_III My aunt was thin. She looked great, she just lived in agony every day towards the end.

@Dutchess_lll the amounts people get differ from place to place. The county I work in is known to pay large amounts so people will often try to go there from elsewhere to get the larger amounts. There are residency requirements to stop that.