Several of you sent me this from Yahoo.com’s headlines page — Economy Hitting Women Hardest, Say Experts (11/21/08). It’s a variation on the “Nuclear Holocaust Kills Billions–Women Hit Hardest” theme. If the Ms. Foundation for Women says women suffer the worst, it must be true.
I’m not an expert on poverty statistics, but I do have a few questions concerning the Ms. Foundation for Women’s assertion that of the “37 million Americans living in poverty, 27 million are women and children”:
1) If 60% of the “27 million women and children” living in poverty are children, then the numbers balance completely–women are no more likely to be in poverty than men. If the % is half, then the male-female poverty ratio is an unremarkable 5 to 4.
It is misleading to say that of the “37 million Americans living in poverty, 27 million are women and children” as a way to show that it’s mostly women who are suffering. You could probably just as truthfully say something along the lines of “of the 37 million Americans living in poverty, 27 million are men and children.”
2) The poverty numbers don’t account for the greater benefits available to poor women than poor men.
3) I doubt that men’s child support obligations are factored in when considering these poverty statistics. In fact, when women receive welfare, the state demands that poor men repay the government for the benefits provided poor women. I doubt that this is considered.
4) The people at the very bottom of society–the homeless and the imprisoned–are overwhelmingly male. That never gets mentioned, of course.
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I like challenging statistics, as well as pointing out omissions. For example, the article points out that 2/3 of the minimum or below-minimum wage workers in the US are women. But they don’t point out how many of them are single moms where that’s the sole source of income. How many of them are the second earner in the family?
But I’d posit that over 90% of the 60% suggested to be kids are living with their moms. That’s 14.6 million kids in poverty living with women in poverty. One can’t exactly argue that the moms aren’t affected by this.
Of course, the other fact obscured by the statistic is how many of these poor parents are actually living together. Being poor does not necessarily make one single.
Statistics are great for what they tell us. But MSM statistics typically don’t tell us the whole story.
Well, I’ll object mildly to you on this, Glenn: reality is that an awful lot of kids in poverty are being raised by single mothers. I agree with you utterly that we therefore make a great huge leap of logic and say that poverty only matters to women. We need to stop that. And I agree with you utterly that the idea that we should put it all on the men in their lives is also stupid.
Also, we’re kicking all single fathers to the curb with these asinine statistics. Yes, the single dad raising kids is not ubiquitous, but he’s not a joke and he’s not unknown.
Indeed, I’m a little envious of my ex-: I’d be a single dad raising two boys right now. I’d LOVE that job. I’d do it in a heartbeat. Yeah, it would suck in a lot of ways, but I WOULD.
Still, there is SOMETHING to the idea that poverty and single motherhood go together. Statistically speaking, it is probably the case that "mothers and children" are an identifiable poverty group. But I agree with you that we’ve got to get out of these sexist generalizations.
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