This paper will examine the trends in poverty in the United States since 1950 and will attempt to explain these trends. This discussion will include as subjects the overall poverty rate during this time period and its long-term trend, the poverty rate amongst certain racial minority groups and its relationship to the overall poverty rate, and some of the reasons for the long-term trends in the poverty rate and the relationship of these trends to short-term changes in the poverty rate.
The first problem which must be addressed when discussing poverty is what is "poor?" This question has been answered in a wide variety of ways by a wide variety of persons. Many different definitions have been used by different authorities, including the federal government. Most have argued that poverty must be defined by the society in which the persons in question lived; the standard of living of the poor in one country may be higher than that of the wealthiest persons in another. As one author has stated, everyone is poor in relation to someone with a higher income; a highly paid executive may have to struggle to maintain the same lifestyle as his neighbors in a community such as Newport or Beverly Hills. Similarly, the poorest slum dwellers in the United States probably have a higher standard of living than some of the most affluent members of tribal societies in the Third World. Even within the same country, the poorest members of society may live better than the richest members did a few centuries earlier. Certainly, some of the poorest members of American and European societies have access to better health care and can probably expect to live longer than the richest members of American society in the 18th Century or the noble families of the Middle Ages.
However, not all of the members of American society live the kind of life which technology has made possible; their health and well-being, not to mention their life expectancies, fall...