Can anyone tell me the number of people that live below the poverty line by race in the US?
Here ya go! Bear in mind that poverty thresholds, as defined by the Census Bureau, are constant across the nation (although the federal government will calculate the wages of its employees based on local cost of living!). This tends to overstate poverty in areas with low cost of living, and understate it in urban areas with high costs of living.
Not sure I understand the white/white non hispanic. Are there 22,184 white below the poverty line, 7393 of which are hispanic? So the remaining 14,791 are what is generally considered a “white” person?
What I am trying to figure out is the percentage of the people below the poverty line that are white. What is a hispanic white?
Do you consider people like Raul Julia and Jennifer Lopez white? If not, then you’ve got it. But your numbers need to be multiplied by 1000.
Are Indian folk white? I think they look just like me? I see no difference in a lot of people that the country doesn’t classify as white.
Major Kong, I’ve always been puzzled by those too. One is not a subcategory of the other, however, I can say that.
Technically, the census does not report people’s races; it reports what people report as their race, and they assume that it’s accurate. So, “Indian folk” are whatever they want to be. Apparently, there are five recognized races: “American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and White”. Then there are combinations thereof.
I believe that the Federal Government recognizes Hispanic as an ethnicity and not as a race. Hispanic people can be of any of the five races, or any combination.
Achernar is exactly right, all the Census Bureau can do is report what people tell 'em. I’m a citizen of the Chickasaw nation, but I fill the “white, not hispanic” bubble.
Major Kong, your suspicion is correct. “White” is a set that includes people reporting “hispanic”, and the group you would typically consider white, non-minority is the “white, non-hispanic” category. But then, there’s the category that’s just “hispanic”. This can include people “black-hispanic” people, or “American Indian-Hispanic.” Furthermore, you could check multiple races in the 2000 Census, but these figures don’t take that into account.
American Indians get their own category to share with Alaskan Natives, and then there’s another group for both Asians and Pacific Islanders.
Also, as Achernar pointed out, you need to make sure you multiply all of those numbers (but not the percentages) by 1,000, since they are measured in thousands. So the number of generally accepted “white” people estimated to live in poverty is 14,791,000, or 7.6%.
Finally, you should know that figures for 2001 are based on surveys, estimates and forecasts, and aren’t quite as reliable as the counts from the 2000 Census (which, confusingly, are figures for 1999 since the effective date of the Census is April 1, 2000).
Any other questions or confusion? I spend a lot of time digging through and interpreting census data…