I had read long ago that whites make up the greatest percent of welfare? is that still true?
What is the racial breakdown of welfare?
What recent of each race is below the poverty level?
I put this in Great Debates cause I know we are going to get into definitions/arguments of poverty,race,census…
White?
Black?
Brown?
Native Indian?
“Welfare” itself is hard to define. AFDC is frequently used, but there are numerous other government poverty-assistance programs (e.g. HUD subsidies, food stamps et al).
Also, it is important to distinguish between the percentage of people who go through the welfare system at some time, and the percentage of people that are on welfare at a given time. I suspect the statistics are frequently skewed by focusing on the former rather than the latter.
In 2000 the percentages of people in poverty were 22.1% for black people and 7.5% for non-hispanic white.
The percentages for welfare are harder to find, i was able to find these mumbers from 1994 about AFDC:
White 38.8%
Black 37.2
Hispanic 17.8
Asian 2.8
Other 3.4
Since these numbers are from before welfare reform they are not likely to be accurate since white people are moving off welfare faster than black people are.
*puddleglum *, am I correct that your denominators are different? E.g. 22.1% of black people live in pverty, but 38.8% of people on welfare are white.
december, if you look at puddleglum’s post you’ll see that the 22.1% of black people . . . is a year 2000 number while the 38.8% of people on welfare are white figure is from 1994.
Yes, that looks right.
Since whites outnumber blacks maybe 9 to 1 or so, we could have a small percentage of whites receiving welfare, but receiving the largest chunk of welfare as a whole.
22.1 is the percentage of black people in poverty out of the total number of black people not the total number of poor people.
If my math is right the percentages for poor people in the US is about 50% white, 25% percent black, and 25% hispanic.