African Americans and Poverty

POVERTY RATES AMONG African Americans are persistently higher than those observed for white Americans in the United States. Recent data, historical data, and even figures from periods in which poverty rates have declined nationwide, all indicate that the proportion of African Americans who are poor routinely exceeds the proportion of white Americans who are poor. This means that while the absolute number of whites who are poor exceeds the number of poor blacks, the probability of being poor is greater for any given black person (on average) than it is for a white person. To many this seems at odds with a fundamental premise of U.S. society—that the United States is a land ofequal opportunity, where every individual has an equal shot at doing well.

Why are poverty rates higher for blacks than they are for whites, and are there any substantive implications? To answer this question one has to think first about the nature of poverty in the United States, because the presence of poverty among African Americans can only be understood after one has a clear understanding of the forms that poverty takes.

At the level of the individual, poverty is observed both among persons who are working and among the nonworking. The existence of the “working poor” means that explanations of poverty cannot focus exclusively on lack of work. Instead, some poverty can be attributed directly to the fact that some jobs pay wages that are so low as to prevent a worker from escaping poverty even if he works full-time throughout the entire year, as noted by Lawrence Mishel et al.

A second characteristic of poverty in the United States, and one that has particular relevance for African Americans, is that poverty can be conceptualized in spa-tial-geographic terms. It is a phenomenon that affects neighborhoods as well as individuals. Researchers such as William Wilson have identified neighborhoods in which the majority of residents are poor and not working because jobs are virtually nonexistent, thus giving rise to the term ghetto poverty or concentrated-poverty neighborhoods.

On average, according to the Census Bureau, African Americans are more than twice as likely to be poor as white Americans. They are also more likely to experience long spells of poverty. What is the reason for the higher incidence of poverty? While several theories exist, William Darity identifies two recurring themes throughout the different explanations. Some theories of poverty, called “individualist” explanations, argue that individuals make specific choices that lead to poverty. Other theories offer “structuralist” explanations that attribute causality to the structure of society and its institutions. To understand African-American poverty one cannot rely on theory alone, however. Knowledge of the empirical research testing the validity of different theoretical propositions is also crucial.

One theory offered by those who believe that indi-vidual-oriented explanations are important is the theory that it is people's unwillingness to work that explains the poverty that exists. In theory, this is a possible explanation for African-American poverty. Traditional labor market models note that some individuals choose to enter the labor market while others opt to remain out of the labor force. To the extent that an individual freely chooses not to work, he or she can be argued to be responsible for his or her poverty since working is the way that most people generate income.

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