People and Their Money - Profiles: Low-income Families

In this panel we continue to look at people with low income — but now using a set of data developed by the U.S. Department of Labor. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, in 1999, 3.8 million families had incomes below the poverty line. The graphic displays the poverty rates of different family arrangements. Rates are all percentages of the respective group shown. Thus, for instance, 6.2% of all families fell below the poverty line; of all families headed by women where children under 18 years were present, 23.9% were poor; finally, of all families made up of married couples without children, 1.5% were poor.

The data reflect some by now, well-known facts:

• Women have a lower average income than men, and when they are the sole support of families, the family is more likely to be living in poverty than a family headed by a single adult male.
• Children cost money to raise and to maintain. Families with children are more likely to be poor than those without children.
• One income does not go as far as two. Households with one individual in the labor force are more likely to be poor than those where two individuals work.

It is clear that the era of the single breadwinner is fading or is altogether past for the great majority of families. This places an extra burden on women, who still carry the disproportionate weight of child-raising chores despite rhetorical flourishes. The evolving economic structure does not favor "family values" in practice — at least as shown by these data. Married couples do better in avoiding poverty — but are most successful when they also avoid having children.

We conclude this series on income by examining the relationship between income and educational attainment in the next panel.

Sources: Beers, Thomas M. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, A Profile of The Working Poor, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C.; Winkler, Anne E. "Earnings of Husbands and Wives in Dual-Earner Families, Monthly Labor Review, April 1998, p. 42.