The Real Numbers: Half of America in Poverty -- and It's Creeping toward 75%

[FreeJoe]

135. How To Lie With Statistics

It was a classic book from the 1950s, I think.

That's what I was reminded of when I read this gem:

4. Based on wage figures, 75% of Americans are NEAR poverty.

According to IRS data, the average household in the bottom 75% earns about $31,000 per year. To be eligible for food assistance, a family can earn up to 130% of the federal poverty line, or about $30,000 for a family of four.

Let's look at this for a second. It says that 75% of Americans are NEAR poverty. The meaningful way to support that would be to give the income of households at the 75 percentile of income. Instead, we get a quote about the average income of households in the bottom 75%. In other words, that's the average income of people at roughly the 37.5 percentile (midway to the 75th percentile). When I see deliberately misleading crap like that, I chuckle and tune out.

Now that I look at it, they do the same thing in #3. The average household in the bottom 50% brings in $18,000 a year. That sounds much more dramatic than saying that 25% of American households earn $18,000 or less.

In #1, it says that half of Americans had NO assets in 2009, but it doesn't give us any comparative time frame. Is that an improvement over 1999 or worse? And by how much?