20 JUNE 2002: KEEPING
THE POOR…POOR.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/national/05CENS.html

Gains of 90’s Did Not Lift
All, Census Shows

By PETER T. KILBORN and
LYNETTE CLEMETSON

 

WASHINGTON, June 4 ˜ Despite
the surging economy of the 1990’s that brought

affluence to many Americans,
the poor remained entrenched, the Census Bureau

reported today. The bureau’s
statistics for the 50 states and the District of

Columbia show that 9.2 percent
of families were deemed poor in 2000, a slight

improvement from 10 percent
in 1989.

    Men’s
incomes fell in 26 states. Nationally, their median incomes ˜ meaning half

earned
less and half more ˜ fell 2.3 percent. Women’s incomes, while
73 percent

of men’s, rose 7 percent
over all and increased in every state except Alaska.

More women than ever went
to work.

    “Some
people thought you lost if you didn’t do as well as the next guy,” said

Martha Farnsworth Riche,
a demographer and former director of the Census Bureau.

“There’s
no doubt that we saw more inequality in the 1990’s, but people
won

across the board in a variety
of ways.”

    The data
released today provide the first national look from the 2000 census at

such demographic issues
as income, poverty, occupation, housing and the

percentage of foreign-born
people living in the United States. The data are

compiled from the 53-question
form that was distributed to about 19 million, or

about 1 in 6, of the country’s
households in the spring of 2000. Thus it picked

up none of the impact of
the recession that was beginning then.

    Expanding
upon figures from the initial 2000 census reports last year, the

bureau reported that more
than half the foreign-born population ˜ 52 percent ˜

came from Latin America,
an increase from 44 percent in the decade. Of the 281.4

million people the census
found in 2000, it said 31.1 million came from abroad,

11.3 million more than in
1990, an increase of 57 percent.

    This
increase in the immigrant population, which many state officials believe

was undercounted, surpassed
the century’s greatest wave of immigration, from

1900 to 1910, when the number
of foreign-born residents grew by 31 percent,

according to the Center
for Immigration Studies in Washington.

    Demographers
noted that for the first time in the 1990’s, immigrants moved far

beyond the big coastal cities
and Chicago and Denver and Houston, into the Great

Plains, the South and Appalachia.

    The foreign-born
population of Franklin County, Ala., grew from 0.19 percent to

5.55 percent, or from 79
people to 1,734. Dawson County, Neb., had 3,866 foreign

residents, or 16 percent
of the population, in 2000, up from 138 people in 1990.

    “These
numbers represent an enormous social experiment with very high stakes,”

said Steven A. Camarota,
director of research for the Center for Immigration

Studies, which advocates
stricter immigration control. “No country has ever

attempted to assimilate
and incorporate 31 million newcomers, and the experiment

is not over.”

    Other
analysts add, however, that immigrants helped propel the boom in the 90’s,

taking low-paid service
jobs and vital assignments in medicine and in technology

companies.

    Reynolds
Farley, demographer at the University of Michigan, said some of the

nation’s old, ailing cities
also had low growth of both industry and

immigration.

    Much
of the huge growth in immigration in Sun Belt states, including Nevada,

Arizona, Georgia, North
Carolina and Tennessee, was fueled by growth in domestic

migration. The flow of wealthy
individuals fleeing congested big cities created

the need for low-wage workers
to build homes, staff restaurants and hotels and

do other low-paid service
work. The result is a barbell economy of extreme haves

and have-nots, said William
Frey, a demographer with the Milken Institute, an

economic research group
in Santa Monica, Calif.

    Nevada,
for instance, had a 94 percent increase in the number of people with

professional and graduate
degrees, but also a 76 percent increase of people with

less than a ninth-grade
education, a number driven by new immigrants. “In the

short term these groups
complement one another,” Mr. Frey said. “But over the

long term there will need
to be significant investment at the local and state

level to bring these immigrants
and their children into the middle class.”

    The census
data also indicated that sprawl intruded upon the ways Americans

lived and worked. Commuters
spent an average of 25.5 minutes getting to work in

2000, about 3 minutes more
than in 1990. Fewer walked or took public

transportation. More chose
to avoid all commuting. In 2000, 3.3 million people

worked at home, 23 percent
more than at the beginning of the decade.

    The surging
economy was a boon to many.

    In 10
years, owners saw the value of their homes rise 17 percent, to a median

$119,600, after barely budging
in the 1980’s. But there were signs that new and

typically bigger houses
were becoming harder to hold. For 15.8 percent of

homeowners, mortgage and
maintenance costs exceeded 35 percent of household

income, an increase from
13.5 percent in 1990.

    “Americans
have more wealth, but they’re living in it,” Ms. Riche said. “With

less liquid wealth, there’s
less flexibility” to save money for retirement or

college tuitions.

    While
not all the same people were poor at the end of the decade as at the

start, the proportions of
the poor changed little. About 6.6 million families,

or 9.2 percent of all families,
qualified as poor in 1999, down from 10 percent

in 1989. In 1999, a family
of four was said to be living in poverty if its

income was less than $16,954.

    Poverty
from state to state and county to county varied widely. The Children’s

Fund, a liberal advocacy
organization, said the census showed that in nine

states and the District
of Columbia, one in five children was poor. “The goal is

to help families escape
poverty, not just escape from the welfare rolls,” said

Marian Wright Edelman, the
organization’s president.

    Poverty
among adults declined little, too, from 11.3 percent to 10.9 percent.

But with the overhaul of
the welfare system six years ago, many women with

children left the welfare
rolls for work.

    The poverty
rate among female-headed households with children younger than 18

fell from 42.3 percent to
34.3 percent. Poverty among the elderly also declined,

to 9.9 percent of people
older than 65 from 12.8 percent.

    Still,
American families realized some solid gains in the decade. After taking

inflation into account,
the bureau found that the median family income climbed

9.5 percent from 1989 to
1999, to $50,046.