Austerity and stagnation pushed nearly half of Americans into functional poverty

Evidence

The quest for effective life had been driven to the breaking point under the aegis of market freedom. Two years after the North London riots, research in the UK showed that by 2013, poverty fueled by lack of education and unemployment already excluded nearly a third of the population from routine social participation. Another UK report concluded, “Workers on low and middle incomes are experiencing the biggest decline in their living standards since reliable records began in the mid-19th Century.” By 2015, austerity measures had eliminated 19 percent, or 18 billion pounds, from the budgets of local authorities, had forced an 8 percent cut in child protection spending, and had caused 150,000 pensioners to no longer enjoy access to vital services. Buy 2014 nearly half of the US population lived in functional poverty, with the highest wage in the bottom half of earners at about $34,000.49 A 2012 US Department of Agriculture survey showed that close to 49 million people lived in “food-insecure” households. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 134

Categorization

• QUESTION: The “functional poverty” statistic — nearly half of the US population — seems arrestingly high; worth checking its definitional basis against other poverty measures.