01.16.12
Poverty, race and the US class system
A week or so ago the census released information on the ten poorest counties in the country.
I’m posting them with the way they voted in 2008. They’re very sparsely populated and all in red states.
Order, poorest at bottom:
Allendale County, S.C. — Obama, 75 percent for Obama
Corson County, S.D. — Corson, 60 percent Obama
Holmes County, Miss. — Obama, 82 percent for Obama
Sioux County, N.D. — Obama, 83 percent for Obama
Washington County, Miss. — Obama, 67 percent for Obama
Humphreys County, Miss. — Obama, 70 percent for Obama
Issaquena County, Miss. — Obama, 61 percent for Obama
Shannon County, S.D. — Obama, 89 percent for Obama
Todd County, S.D. — Obama, 78 percent for Obama
Ziebach County, S.D. — Obama, 62 percent for Obama, 242 votes cast overall
The statistics, unsurprisingly, show extreme poverty to be linked with race. And in this country that also now equals class. This is, obviously, not the entire picture. For example, whites make up the majority of those on food stamps. And, over the months, this blog has discussed other linked issues affecting everyone.
In any case, the counties in South Dakota and North Dakota on the list are places where native Americans are the chief demographic. Those in the south, are almost entirely African American. For instance, the counties in Mississippi are all along or clustered near the river.
… American society being what it is, there are racial implications to the way our incomes have been pulling apart. And in any case, King — who was campaigning for higher wages when he was assassinated — would surely have considered soaring inequality an evil to be opposed.
But around 1980 the relative economic position of blacks in America stopped improving. Why? An important part of the answer, surely, is that circa 1980 income disparities in the United States began to widen dramatically, turning us into a society more unequal than at any time since the 1920s
Last week Alan Krueger, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, gave an important speech about income inequality, presenting a relationship he dubbed the “Great Gatsby Curve.??? Highly unequal countries, he showed, have low mobility: the more unequal a society is, the greater the extent to which an individual’s economic status is determined by his or her parents’ status. And as Mr. Krueger pointed out, this relationship suggests that America in the year 2035 will have even less mobility than it has now, that it will be a place in which the economic prospects of children largely reflect the class into which they were born.
If you have been reading Krugman’s blog, over the weekend you saw him post the actual “Great Gatsby Curve.”
“As [it] shows, America is both especially unequal and has especially low mobility,” he added.
The masters of the universe, on the other hand, are all “corporate suits.”