3 Percent of Americans Live in Chronic Poverty

Chronic poverty means living for years and years without enough income to provide for the basic necessities of life.

These 3 percent are living what most Americans have in mind when they envision poverty.

However, the official government definition of poverty includes a much larger group than those who are truly living in chronic poverty. Consider this example: if a person is laid off from a good job and expects to find another job within three months, the federal government would say that person is living in poverty during the three months without income. However, just 16 percent of voters agree with the government definition.[2]

Several other examples of this disconnect were found in the ScottRasmussen.com survey:

• The official statistics say that a college student with no income who is supported by her parents and living in an off-campus apartment is living in poverty. Only 15 percent of voters agree.

• Just 21 percent believe that it’s living in poverty when a person who has earned a good middle-class income for many years loses his job and takes six months to find a new job.

• Only 9 percent believe that someone who takes six months off from work to travel is living in poverty. But the government stats would consider this traveler to be in poverty.

On the other hand, consider a low-income worker who, over a period of several years, barely makes more money than the amount officially defined as the poverty line. According to the government statistics, that person is not living in poverty. But 74% of voters take the opposite view.

The flaws in the government data trace their roots to the 1960s and the War on Poverty. At the time, experts assumed that most who experienced poverty did so for extended periods of time. It turns out that assumption was inaccurate.

Data collected over the years shows that half of those officially defined as living in poverty get out of poverty within four months or less. Those people are like some of the examples earlier in this article.

I address these and related issues in my latest book, The Sun Is Still Rising: Politics Has Failed But America Will Not.

Each weekday, Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day explores interesting and newsworthy topics at the intersection of culture, politics, and technology. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.

Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of the Rasmussen Media Group. He is the author of "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," "In Search of Self-Governance," and "The People’s Money: How Voters Will Balance the Budget and Eliminate the Federal Debt." Read more reports from Scott Rasmussen — Click Here Now.