Talk:Poverty in the United States

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Policy Analysis

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Wiki Education assignment: Global Poverty and Practice

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can welfare cure poverty in US

The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes and does not include noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps) That means if the government triples the amount of public housing, medicare and food stamps the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) poverty rate will not change at all. However the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) will go down. OPM answers the question "how much poverty is created by the private economy" but SPM answers "how well off are these people in terms of living standards." Rjensen (talk) 03:04, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

You are somewhat correct; the OPM includes government cash transfers like SSI, and welfare. (This is mentioned in the lead). Do you have a suggestion on how to improve the article? Do you think that could be more clear? ---Avatar317^(talk) 20:18, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Poverty and homelessness

As COVID-era protection programs expired and a cost-of-living crisis hit the country, homelessness numbers rose, surpassing 2007 Great Recession levels in 2023.(ref name=HUD_202312)

Re including this chart re homelessness in this article on poverty, see:

• From the National Coalition for the Homeless (cited ten times in Homelessness in the United States): Why Do People Experience Homelessness? "Homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked."
• From the NIH: Poverty, Homelessness, and Family Break-Up: "Poverty was also longstanding: 62.8% had experienced a prior episode of homelessness..."
• In Connecticut state government through News 12: New poverty task force will address homelessness: "...poverty task force designed to address homelessness and other issues relating to poverty"
• In New York through the Times Union: Number of homeless students grows across New York: "Poverty and homelessness remain a pervasive issue for students across New York"

@Avatar317: Even without these references that remove alleged WP:OR issues, it should be obvious that there is a relation between poverty and homelessness, even if there are causes for homelessness other than poverty. The claim—your claim—that this relation is a "commonly held myth" is unsubstantiated, against reliable references, and contrary to common sense. The chart should remain. Please re-insert. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:26, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

The problem is this: EPISODES of homelessness are experienced more by poor people than middle-class people, so yes, there is a RELATION to poverty. However, THESE CURRENT TRENDS (increases) in homelessness have nothing to do with poverty, it has to do with the increasing nationwide housing shortage.

From WP:SYNTH "Do not combine material from multiple sources to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." This graph and caption is implying a conclusion not supported by sources.

Note the difference between your graph of homelessness (with the steep recent increase) and the Census' Bureau's publication of a similar graph for both measures of poverty. [1] ---Avatar317^(talk) 23:26, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I can't seem to quickly find a graph of the homelessness RATE over time, but to my knowledge, that graph would be THE REVERSE of the Census poverty graph I linked, which shows a gradual downward trajectory for both measures of the poverty rate. ---Avatar317^(talk) 23:40, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

There seem to be sources that make this connection (see Homelessness), though they aren't listed in the Poverty article..."Poverty is a significant factor in homelessness..."

Cheers. DN (talk) 01:04, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Those three sources are from Kenya and Canada, NOT the US, so not relevant here. ---Avatar317^(talk) 01:58, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Now that I looked at those sources, that whole section was WP:OR. I have removed it. ---Avatar317^(talk) 02:04, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

I can perceive this being due in the section titled "Effects of Poverty". Cheers. DN (talk) 01:38, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

@Avatar317: It is irrelevant whether a single year's a homelessness trend is opposite to a poverty trend, especially when the previous ~15 years' trends are similar. It's simply not our place as WP editors to dismiss the explicitly quoted statements from reliable sources simply because another factor (housing shortages) also affect homelessness. All substantially relevant, reliably sourced facts should be laid out for the reader—not us—to weigh; readers should see that over some periods poverty and homeless do not march in lockstep, and to hide this fact amounts to content-related censorship. FYI, the caption, which I now strike out, is a leftover from the earlier Statista reference, not HUD, so if you have a caption that you perceive as less WP:OR-ish, please suggest. —RCraig09 (talk) 05:18, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Homelessness is simply a different topic than Poverty. *IF* we had a section in this article that was appropriately sourced and talked about the connection between Poverty and Homelessness than that graph would be appropriate in that section. But for now, the four sources you provided above would not make good sources to establish a section about this.

From my understanding of this topic, you/we/us Wikipedians should be able to find sources which talk about: "Being in poverty makes people more likely to experience homelessness" (episodic or chronic), and with a well-sourced section about that, we could have the graph. (I would prefer if the graph showed homelessness RATE, since that is more meaningful.) ---Avatar317^(talk) 05:50, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Nice catch, some of those sources from the homelessness article do seem like they were not very direct or explicit.

While lack of access to housing makes sense as the primary cause of homelessness, I don't see explaining that poverty (homelessness) is also considered an aspect, as necessarily different or off topic. I do agree that that it's original placement in the article may have been debatable, but I think it would be an improvement to the article to clarify the question as to it's relevance to poverty.

I think we can reconcile this by discussing the sources that analyze this and ensure any inclusion doesn't overstate the significance.

Here are a few more citations that also seem to mention a connection.

• "No factor matters more to homelessness than access to housing. Poverty, mental illness, addiction and other issues do play roles, but they are less significant." NYT
• "At its root, homelessness emerges from local economic systems that permit, or are otherwise incapable of preventing, poverty deep enough to limit some persons from accessing housing (Liebow 1993; Wolch and Dear 1993)."On the Relationship between Poverty Segregation and Homelessness in the American City and Suburb
• "Poverty is overriding and intertwined in homelessness." The Ecology of Homelessness: Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 20(2), 105–152. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911350903269757

Cheers. DN (talk) 10:21, 25 January 2025 (UTC)