Are You Poor?
According to the Census Bureau people who possesed the following items were defined as poor (via Murdoc):
- Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
- Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
- Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
- The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
- Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
- Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
- Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.
We don't have an automatic dishwasher or a half bath ( unless you count back behind the shed in an emergency!). I suppose I am below the poverty line! Funny, my Mom use to pick cotton as a share-croppers daughter when she was young. They had nothing, but still insists if they were poor they never realized it!
I wonder if owning only 1 SUV counts as being poor to the government?