Indeed, among some types of households, notably aged persons living alone, the proportion within what might be at best a zone of borderline poverty has been steadily growing. For nonwhite households as a group, too, the incidence of borderline poverty over the period increased somewhat, but not steadily year by year (table 4). If this trend should continue it could signify a first step in lifting out of poverty the major disadvantaged groups, but it could indicate that more powerful remedies are needed.

The numbers tell us that the dimension of poverty measured solely by size of the group affected is smaller than it used to be by 5 million persons or 11⁄2 million households. They do not tell us how many in the current count of the poor have been there throughout most of their lives and how many have only recently joined the ranks of the poor.

The Poverty-Prone

One measure of the improvement in economic well-being of the Nation's households is the change in differential risk of poverty among various groups. If we are to approach equality of opportunity, then the degree to which the chances of being poor are evened out among various kinds of households is as important as the reduction in the total number of the poor. To accomplish this end the groups most vulnerable to poverty would need to show greater improvement in order to come closer to the rest. In these terms much remains undone. unfavorable economic status of nonwhite families compared with white remains, with the gap for large families growing even wider. Similarly the poor situation of families headed by a woman, compared to that for families headed by a man, has if anything worsened.

The

Among unrelated individuals, another poverty-prone group, the poverty rate declined by about 10 percent between 1959 and 1964, whereas for families of two or more the poverty rate of 14 percent in 1964 was nearly one-fourth lower than that in 1959.

Among families with no children the improvement was greater for nonwhite than for white, but for families with children the reverse was true. Indeed the plight of nonwhite families with 5 or more children had actually deteriorated over the period. In 1964, 76 percent of all nonwhite families with as many as five children were poor, compared with 71 percent in 1959. This heavy incidence of poverty epitomizes the two major hazards to the economic well-being of nonwhite children-the broken family and the low earning power of the father when he is present. Of the half-million nonwhite families with 5 or more children in poverty in 1964, about 1 in 3 had a woman at the head, and another third were headed by a man who had a full-time job throughout the year. Fully half the nonwhite male heads of these large families in poverty worked the year around. The child growing up in a family with several brothers and sisters continues to run a heavy risk of poverty, particularly if he is in a family already highly vulnerable on other counts-as in the case of the family on a farm, the one headed by a woman, or the nonwhite family no matter where it lives or who is its head. Even in 1964, more than 4 out of 10 families with a nonwhite or female head had less than the income it takes to meet the test of the SSA poverty index, and 3 out of 10 farm families were in the same situation. Indeed, with 68 percent of all families of three or four children headed by a woman who were classed as poor and 83 percent of those with five or more children, it becomes almost tautological to apply the test for low income, which requires a third more income.

All told, there were about 30 percent more families with at least five children under age 18 in the home in 1964 than in 1959, and the family with five or more youngsters in the home was now four times as likely to be poor as the family with one or two.

Among nonwhite families in 1964, one-fourth of all those with even one child in the home were poor and three-fourths of those with as many as five. A fourth of all nonwhite families with five or more children were now headed by a woman, compared with a fifth in 1959. Among white families this large, the proportion headed by a woman increased also from 6.5 to 8.0 percent.

Overall, the situation of the small family improved more than that of the large family, so that families with at least five children accounted for 46 percent of all the youngsters counted as poor in 1964 compared with a corresponding figure of 42 percent in 1959.

Among all households headed by a woman 44 percent were in poverty in 1964; 50 percent of these households were in poverty in 1959. Households headed by a man, who as a rule are better off, also had a reduction in their poverty rate from 18 to 14 percent. Thus, although a woman who serves as family head has a better chance of keeping her family above the poverty line than was true in 1959, the improvement has not been so favorable as for the family headed by a man. In 1964, her family was more than three times as likely to be poor as a family headed by a man. In 1959, the chances her family would be poor were two and three-fourths times that of a man's family.

Our rural population continued to be poorer than their city cousins. Even in 1964, a third of all persons living on farms were in households with a cash income below what the economy scale suggests is necessary. The risk of poverty for the farm dweller was thus twice as great as that prevailing among the rest of the population-despite the fact that the poverty income criteria for the farm family was set at a figure 30 percent lower than the nonfarm family. Although

the poverty rate among farm households for 1964 is considerably less than in 1959, most of the reduction took place in a single year-from 1960 to 1961, when average farm family income (as reported to the Census Bureau) increased by about 15 percent. The incidence of poverty dropped sharply from 38 percent to 32 percent. Since that date it has declined further by 3 percentage points. Among nonfarm households, the poverty rate dropped from 23 percent to 19 percent between 1961 and 1964.

As an age group, persons aged 65 and older have the highest incidence of poverty in the population, and among the aged those who live alone (or with nonrelatives only) still rank as the poorest of the poor.

By 1964, in the face of a decline in the total ranks of the poor of nearly 5 million, there were 300,000 more elderly persons living alone in poverty than in 1959. The increase came about because more aged persons, particularly women, were electing to live by themselves. The rate of poverty for aged unrelated individuals had actually gone down-from 68 percent in 1959 to 59 percent in 1964. What is more striking is the fact that many more elderly persons in 1964 than in earlier years had enough money to try getting along by themselves instead of sharing a home with a child (or other relatives) in a household with combined income more nearly adequate for all. The change in living patterns was greater for women than for men, as the following figures for persons aged 65 or older indicate.

In addition to changes in the number who are poor, there is another crude measure of progress against poverty-the total dollars of unmet need.

Just how much less than the aggregate estimated need is the actual income of the poor today-that is, in 1964-compared with those judged poor in earlier years? In the very rough terms that the selected income standard permits, it can be estimated that the 34 million persons identified as poor in 1964 would require $11.7 billion over and above their current money income to purchase the basic requirements implied by the poverty index. To eliminate completely the povertyincome gap would require therefore the equivalent in 1964 of 2.4 percent of the Nation's personal income, which totaled $495 billion for the year.

5

Judged in these terms, the record expansion in the general economy has proceeded about twice as fast as the rate by which the income deficiency of the poor was being reduced. In 1959, when total personal income was $112 billion less, the unmet financial need of the 39 million poor was $2 billion more. The aggregate poverty deficit then represented a sum equal to 3.6 percent of total personal income. During a period then, when national personal income was increasing by 29 percent, the number in poverty decreased by 12 percent and their unmet income need by 15 percent.

As a group the poor in 1964 were having to manage on incomes totaling 59 percent of estimated need, compared with 57 percent in 1962 and 56 percent in 1959. In poor households headed by a man, aggregate incomes in 1964 represented 63 percent of requirements, but poor households with a woman at the head had only 52 percent as much as they needed. Five years earlier, in 1959, persons in poverty were living on 60 percent as much as they needed if they were in households with a man at the head, and 46 percent if they were not.

5 An earlier estimate of $11.5 billion for 1963 related to 34.6 million persons judged poor, assuming a farm family requires only 60 percent as much cash as a nonfarm family rather than the 70-percent figure in the current definition. The 70-percent criterion would raise the number in poverty on farms in 1963 by 730,000 and the number for the farm and nonfarm population combined to 35.3 million. No recalculation has been made of the total dollar deficit for 1963 under the increased income requirement for farm households.

To satisfy the low-income test of need-a measure calling for approximately one-third more in income for a family than the poverty index-would entail $21.2 billion more income for the poor in 1964 than they had, or the equivalent of 4.3 percent of total personal income for the Nation, as the following figures suggest :

Paralleling the changing composition of the poverty roster, the share of the income deficit that represents needs of the families of women, particularly those with several children, increased. The share representing needs of small famlies headed by a man went down (table 5). In similar fashion the aggregate need of the aged poor who live alone also rose although not in direct proportion to their growing number.

TABLE 5.-The poverty gap, 1959 and 1964: Total difference between actual and required income of all households below the poverty level

For the most part the smaller aggregate income shortage of the poor in 1964 signified that they were fewer in number than in 1959, not that those who were poor were much better off. The median difference between actual and required income at the poverty level was about $100 less for unrelated individuals tagged

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