[url=http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2013/07/28/exclusive-signs-declining-economic-security/57kY9kCJXZnl6Z5o6LvZJI/singlepage.html]AP report.[/url] [quote]While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. [b]Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government’s poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60[/b], according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press. The gauge defines ‘‘economic insecurity’’ as experiencing unemployment during the year, or a year or more of reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. [b]Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.[/b] Marriage rates are in decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones. ‘‘It’s time that America comes to understand that [b]many of the nation’s biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position[/b],’’ said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty. He noted that despite continuing economic difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama’s election, while struggling whites do not.[/quote][quote]Nationwide, the count of America’s poor remains stuck at a record number: [b]46.2 million, or 15 percent of the population,[/b] due in part to lingering high unemployment following the recession. While poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by absolute numbers the predominant face of the poor is white. [b]More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation’s destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.[/b] Sometimes termed ‘‘the invisible poor’’ by demographers, [b]lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white.[/b] Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America’s heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.[/quote][quote]In 2011 that snapshot showed 12.6 percent of adults in their prime working-age years of 25-60 lived in poverty. [b]But measured in terms of a person’s lifetime risk, a much higher number — 4 in 10 adults — falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives.[/b] The risks of poverty also have been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55, coinciding with widening income inequality. For instance, [b]people ages 35-45 had a 17 percent risk of encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; that risk increased to 23 percent during the 1989-2009 period. For those ages 45-55, the risk of poverty jumped from 11.8 percent to 17.7 percent.[/b] [b]Higher recent rates of unemployment mean the lifetime risk of experiencing economic insecurity now runs even higher: 79 percent, or 4 in 5 adults, by the time they turn 60.[/b] By race, [b]nonwhites still have a higher risk of being economically insecure, at 90 percent.[/b] But compared with the official poverty rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure are among whites, with more than 76 percent enduring periods of joblessness, life on welfare or near-poverty. [b]By 2030, based on the current trend of widening income inequality, close to 85 percent of all working-age adults in the U.S. will experience bouts of economic insecurity.[/b][/quote][quote]—[b]For the first time since 1975, the number of white single-mother households living in poverty with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and faster rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites.[/b] White single-mother families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011, comparable to the number for blacks. Hispanic single-mother families in poverty trailed at 1.2 million. —Since 2000, [b]the poverty rate among working-class whites has grown faster than among working-class nonwhites[/b], rising 3 percentage points to 11 percent as the recession took a bigger toll among lower-wage workers. Still, poverty among working-class nonwhites remains higher, at 23 percent. —[b]The share of children living in high-poverty neighborhoods — those with poverty rates of 30 percent or more — has increased to 1 in 10[/b], putting them at higher risk of teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 17 percent of the child population in such neighborhoods, compared with 13 percent in 2000, even though the overall proportion of white children in the U.S. has been declining. [b]The share of black children in high-poverty neighborhoods dropped from 43 percent to 37 percent, while the share of Latino children went from 38 percent to 39 percent.[/b] —Race disparities in health and education have narrowed generally since the 1960s. [b]While residential segregation remains high, a typical black person now lives in a nonmajority black neighborhood for the first time. Previous studies have shown that wealth is a greater predictor of standardized test scores than race; the test-score gap between rich and low-income students is now nearly double the gap between blacks and whites.[/b][/quote] Have you and/or your family members felt the effect of this declining economic security, whether it's losing a job, pay cuts, or less spending on "recreational" activities? Are you optimistic about your chances of living a reasonably comfortable life? Have you changed your education and/or career goals in response to the economy? Do you feel this is the "new normal", or is there a way to combat it?