----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 6:27 AM Subject: Re: Race to the Bottom
You quoted: > Yet among native-born Americans, poverty rates have declined > steadily since the 1960s. In the case of black families, median > incomes have recently been rising at twice the pace for the country as > a whole. That's fairly misleading. If you look at the black poverty rate from '67 on, you will find that it was under 30% from '68 to '80, and then rose. The average poverty rate from '81 to '92 was higher than the average poverty rate from '68 to '80. It isn't just a matter of cherry picking intervals, either. It peaked at 33% in '82, and was 31.3% in '92. Under Clinton, blacks did very well indeed, with the poverty rate falling to 19.3% in '2000. It has been rising since then, coming back up to 23.9% in '02. '03 numbers are not available at the present time, but I'd be happy to put a beer bet down that it will be higher than '02. We have a few years to see if the drop in black poverty was a short term phenomenon. Further, you can look at the numbers comparing white and white non-Hispanic Americans and see that the lower wages earned by recent immigrants is responsible for only a small fraction of the growth in income disparity. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
