Hispanic Poverty Rate Highest In New Supplemental Census Measure – Pew Hispanic Center

Posted by deslava27 |

Hispanic Poverty Rate Highest In New Supplemental Census Measure – Pew Hispanic Center.

Now I take this information with a grain of salt. For one it was very clear that many Hispanics and undocumented immigrants did not answer the 2010 census for fear that the information would be relayed back to homeland security, ICE as well as INS.  Even families with legal status did not part take in the census for fear that their undocumented family members would be implicated. This had an impact on not only the numbers but also discounted many undocumented immigrants who should have been counted but were not out of fear. Also the method employed does not accurately reflect the spending habits of immigrant workers.

The method that the new poverty guide lines address considers factors such as food, medical and other basic living costs as well as geographical information to determine where on the poverty line you are.  This would undoubtably bring undocumented immigrants lower on the scale since because of their status have to pay cash for all of their expenses as oppose to getting subsidies from the state,  insurance, pension and retirement funds. In a non-credit  based economy immigrants spend more money on food, health and every day living costs. With less loan and credit based assets more money is spent on living expenses, saving are reduced for investment, and many immigrants spend a large part of their earnings to sent back to their homeland.

Let me explain, if you are undocumented its harder to apply for a loan to buy a house, car, invest your money in stocks, bonds, or even insurance. If you can’t buy a house you have to rent and this is a negative impact, because with a mortgage at least you have an asset that at a later date you can sell and recover some cost, or over the long run pay off and own. Instead you are perpetually renting. Same goes with a car if you can’t get a loan, you have to pay cash up front for your purchase. This makes undocumented immigrants less debt prone but also spend more for items in the short run, making less money available to save or invest.

The New York Times also recently commented on an article stating how the new measurement changes the status of many fixed income families as well as disabled and retired folk. This is another failure by the government to categorize and measure not only population but as well as inflation and living expenses.   The current method for inflation is also flawed because it incorrectly assumes consumer habits.   Using the data to correlate poverty level compounds the problem. Also because of their undocumented status wages are drastically reduced also adding to a lower-income based on geography.

In all its a tough problem to analyse and shows how flawed the system to measure the population as diverse as the US can be. Inherently what applies to one group can not be used to measure a completely different group with a different living standard.  What worries me is not so much the numbers and statistics it generates but how theses statistics will be used by candidates as the election come around.