UMASS Economics Expert Explains High Poverty Numbers (AMHERST, Mass.) (WGGB)– The latest poverty numbers are out. While they show a slight decline in the poverty rate, the overall numbers of poor has not significantly changed. The latest census bureau numbers show that more than 45-million Americans are living below the poverty level, about 14.5 percent of Americans. For a family of four, that’s just under 24-thousand dollars a year. While the poverty rate is down slightly, there is no statistically significant change in the overall number of poor people, “It tells us that economic policy is not working effectively to reduce poverty and to share wealth across all Americans,” says UMass Economics Professor Gerald Friedman Professor Friedman says workers wages have not kept up with productivity and profits, “For the average Americans basically the bottom 80 percent of the American population wages have not gone up , people are being paid more or less what they were paid in 1974 adjusted for inflation,” says Professor Friedman. He also says most of the people living in poverty are working , many fulltime and that the minimum wage has also badly lagged behind. Western Mass residents we spoke with agree, “You can’t support a family of three, four or five doing that no matter how many hours you work you work 40, 60 hours it’s just not enough to get by,” says Anthony Saylor of Springfield. Liz Boucher of Westfield agrees, “There are not enough good paying jobs, people are not getting the education that I wish they could get,” says Boucher. Professor Friedman also says that one of the major reasons that wages have not kept up with productivity over the years is the decline of the labor union. He says today fewer than 10 percent of Americans working in the private sector are represented by unions.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 22:10:44 +0000
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