Black Middle Class - Poverty For African Americans

Poverty For African Americans

As of 2010, the poverty rate among non-Hispanic whites sits at 9.9%, whereas the poverty rate among African Americans is 27.4%.

Long term poverty is rare for Whites. Almost 9 out of 10 long-term poor children are African American and more than 6 out of long-term poor children have spent time in single-parent families. Poverty in a child’s most formative years is critical to shaping a child’s future attainments in terms of test scores, schooling, fertility choices, labor market outcomes and incomes. Research has shown that parents who devote all time to meeting consumption needs and have little time, money, and energy left to improving their own lives and children’s education and skills. Because lower and middle-class African Americans attend lower quality schools, less formalized forms of social control, fewer job networks, and have fewer good role models, this causes many African Americans to turn to teen gangs and crime. The parental associations between disadvantage and material deprivation may also reproduce itself intergenerationally through harsh, inconsistent parenting styles and a failure to provide an emotional and cognitive environment conducive to healthy growth. Although middle-class African Americans may earn more than their lower-class African American counterparts, research shows that disadvantage is not just related to income itself, but the disadvantages associated with race, discrimination, and intergenerational deprivation. Race is a proxy for a historical disadvantage which is being reproduced despite income and material gains for the Black middle class.