Yesterday's material poverty is all but gone. In all too many cases, it has been replaced by a more debilitating kind of poverty — behavioral poverty or poverty of the spirit. This kind of poverty refers to conduct and values that prevent the development of healthy families, work ethic and self sufficiency. The absence of these values virtually guarantees pathological lifestyles that include drug and alcohol addiction, crime, violence, incarceration, illegitimacy, single parent households, dependency and erosion of work ethic. The 2009 poverty guideline was 22,000 for an urban four person family. In 2009, having income less than that, 15 percent or 40 million Americans were classified as poor, but there's something unique about those poor people not seen anywhere else in the world. — 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 two thirds have more than two rooms per person. — The typical 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 a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.
Poverty of the spirit is a direct result of the perverse incentives created by some of our efforts to address material poverty.