Having been on Episcopal mission trip to Honduras, I have seen poverty - houses with dirt floors, no running water, three people living under some tin and plastic between two factory buildings, a hole in the ground surrounded by some boards and plastic for a toilet. People making $2.00 a day. Children who can't go to school. That's poverty. This, this is not poverty:
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.
Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
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.
The report is lengthy, but read it all. And remember these things when multi-millionaire lawyer John Edwards starts preaching on his "two Americas" theme. We actually seem to be winning the war on economic poverty. Poverty of the spirit, though, is a whole other fight - and in that we have not been as successful.
