Dog bites man - fall in number of Americans living below official poverty line

National Review, Nov 24, 1989

Dog Bites Man

HAD THE data moved ever so slightly in the other direction, it would have been page-one news. Instead the official poverty figures, buried by the press, showed that the number of Americans living below the official poverty line fell last year, just as it has each year since 1983 The same Census Bureau survey reported per-capita income in 1988 reached a record $13,123, the sixth year running in which income growth outpaced inflation. (Real income fell during most of the decade preceding the Reagan recovery.) Real per-capita income of blacks in 1988 rose more than twice as fast as the national average, and black married couples enjoyed a startling 6.8 per cent real increase in median income, to $30,390. Even the old line about the rising economic tide not raising all boats appears, upon inspection, unsupportable: although the share of total income going to the poorest two-fifths of families has fallen since 1980, the average income of this group is nearly 10 per cent higher now than at the start of the decade.