For example ““Near the end of Marine Officer Basic School my wife was ranked 12th out of 200 Officers. The last graded evolution was the Platoon Commander’s leadership ranking. My wife had scored the highest in “attack planning”? and tactical leadership. Regardless, her Platoon Commander ranked her second from the bottom in leadership (the first two rankings she received throughout the course was 4th and 8th out of 30). The only person ranked lower was the token black male in her platoon. She was ranked lower than one of the other women in her platoon (still ranked near the bottom) who was balling when she was in her leadership role, during an important exercise (balling in front of everyone ““ not something a Marine Officer does ““ tends to make your troops lose confidence in your ability not to get them killed). Due to my wife’s PC ranking, her overall ranking dropped from the top five percent to below the thirtieth percentile and from second in her platoon to the bottom half. My wife was guaranteed to be a pilot but most of the people at the bottom of the class typically get the bad duty stations and bad jobs (supply officer at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina). It is no coincidence that most of the women and black officers in the Marine Corps are supply officers in Albany, GA; Jacksonville, NC; Barstow, CA.

In flight school, again at the top of her class, she had her third to last flight with an instructor who made it known that he thought women should not be in the military. She ended up failing his flight. Never got less than an outstanding in any of her other 25 flights before or the three flights after, however, that was enough to drop her rank to number two ““ keeping her from her dream of flying fighter jets.

There are so many factors that lead to the pay disparity other than merely pay. On a positive note, our culture, over the last forty years, has made significant progress (both good and bad) in changing over a thousand years of cultural programming.

On the other hand, Robert’s claim that what he described is “is what most middle-class college students do” is simply not true, as Avener and La Luba pointed out. The typical middle-class college student either a) lives in a dorm, b) lives with their spouse/family which is above the poverty line, or c) recieves over $9,573 a year in income, student loans, grants, and gifts from family combined.

If a student is in any of those situations, then they’re not counted as being below the poverty line. And Robert, those situations are FAR more typical of how middle-class folks go to college than your example of someone who lives off of their savings.

I mean seriously….two to four years of living off of savings? With no other income? Who can do that?!

Savings are not reported on your taxes.

She spends several years with very little income (but no real financial worries), living off of savings or adjusting her lifestyle downward while she goes to school.

This person still reports those savings on a tax return form, so wouldn’t she be excluded from being classified as “poor”?

Personally, I have a problem with the idea of selectively defining poverty on a basis other than financial resources, or selecting a hierarchy of who’s “really” poor. Sure, an unemployed person like myself, who has the skills necessary to return to a high-paying job when one crops up is better off than a person who does not yet have the education or training to get a high-paying job (faster track out of poverty once employment is found)…..but in the meantime, I’m having the same struggle paying my bills. My journeyman card gives me the potential for high earnings and benefits, but until I find a job I have to make do with an unemployment check! Groceries and utilities aren’t any cheaper for me just because I have that “potential”, y’know.
In other words, most of us rely on full-time employment to keep us out of poverty. An education is not the same as a safety net.

I would think most middle-class college students are supported by their parents, and are listed as dependents. They have little or no income, but unless their parents live under the poverty line, they wouldn’t statistically be counted.

How many people go to college? The arc described is what most middle-class college students do.

I do agree that there are probably a lot of false negatives in the mix as well, people who really are in bad shape but who for one reason or another don’t register as “poor”.

That’s a lot of savings.

Example: A woman quits her $60,000 a year job at HP to go back and get her master’s in clinical psychology so she can become a family therapist. She spends several years with very little income (but no real financial worries), living off of savings or adjusting her lifestyle downward while she goes to school. When she’s finished, she becomes a therapist and again makes a good living. Nobody would accurately describe this person as “poor”? in the same sense that we mean when we talk about, say, some family in a barrio that can’t make ends meet and gets state assistance.

Okay, so long as her student loans, interest income, and work income doesn’t bring her above $9500 a year - and as long as she doesn’t receive gifts from family members or whomever to help her along - and as long as she doesn’t live with a husband or family member who is working - and as long as she doesn’t live in a dorm - then yes, she’d be officially counted as below the poverty line.

But what I’m not sure is, why do you think this is a significant observation?

Given the size of the economy, I’m not sure that any measure of “poverty” is possible that would correctly account for every possible situation. The question is, is the situation you describe (basically, a well-off person voluntarily choosing to live off savings for a few years before voluntarily returning to being well-off) common enough so that poverty statistics are significantly warped by their inclusion?

In other words, the current poverty rate is about 10%. If eliminating “false positives” like what you describe from the poverty rate would change it to about 9.5%, then I would agree you’re talking about a significant problem in our measurement of poverty. If it would change it from 10% to 9.99%, however, then who cares?

My guess is that the problem of “false positives” is very small compared to the problem of “false negatives.”

I make the absolute same as a white male, asian female, or any other ethnicity… with the same amount of experience. Anyone wanna comment on that?

Sashinka -

I’d say that your experience isn’t representative of what every person in the economy experiences.

First of all, obviously there are always individual exceptions to any trend you can name. That doesn’t mean that the trend doesn’t exist.

Second of all, my guess is that pay scales in the military are often more regulated, and thus have less room for discrimination, than pay scales in most of the economy.

I make the absolute same as a white male, asian female, or any other ethnicity… with the same amount of experience. Anyone wanna comment on that? Yes, I must risk my life for the current persidents’ political wanderings, but I’m an equal in pay, but normally not in responsibility. That’s another post. There are politically left leaning people in the military. honest.

Example: A woman quits her $60,000 a year job at HP to go back and get her master’s in clinical psychology so she can become a family therapist. She spends several years with very little income (but no real financial worries), living off of savings or adjusting her lifestyle downward while she goes to school. When she’s finished, she becomes a therapist and again makes a good living. Nobody would accurately describe this person as “poor” in the same sense that we mean when we talk about, say, some family in a barrio that can’t make ends meet and gets state assistance.

But in the statistics, they both look the same.

Now, I can certainly think of ways that you can be below the poverty threshold and still not be poor; for instance, someone being supported generously by a wealthy person who is not related to them. Or a wealthy person who lives entirely on capital gains. However, I doubt that these are all that common; more importantly, for the purpose of this post, I don’t know of any reason to believe that these situations are more common among black women than white women.

On the other hand, it’s also damned easy to be above the poverty line and still be poor. The poverty thresholds are very old-fashioned and underestimate real poverty. I should probably do a post on that.