Friday, August 31, 2007

Gainesville poverty up -- or is it?

from The Gainesville Sun

By JEFF ADELSON

College students driving luxury cars down W. University Avenue may not seem impoverished, but they likely are being counted as part of Gainesville's poverty rate, which is more than triple the national average, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Tuesday.

Though statistics show that 32.3 percent of Gainesville residents were below the poverty line in 2006, an increase of more than 5 percentage points since the 2000 census, economists and even officials with the Census Bureau caution that the figures may only reflect part of the story.

The 66,000 students at the University of Florida and Santa Fe Community College - many of whom report little or no income because they are full-time students - may skew poverty figures for Alachua County, with a population of about 215,700 people. In addition, the relatively small population of the county may add to uncertainty about the actual rate.

According to the statistics released Tuesday - based on the American Community Survey, a yearly study conducted by the Census Bureau designed to eventually replace the traditional Census - Alachua County had a poverty rate of about 22.4 percent in 2006, compared to Gainesville's 32.3 rate.

Statewide, the poverty rate is about 12.6 percent and the official poverty rate for the United States, which is determined using a different study, is about 12.3 percent.

But the statistics show that those living in poverty in Alachua County are disproportionately college-aged, likely reflecting the large number of students with little income of their own at UF and SFCC.

About 64.3 percent of those living in poverty in Gainesville are between 18 and 24 years old and about 52 percent of those living in poverty countywide are in that age range.

If the statistics are adjusted to bring Gainesville's college-aged population into line with the rest of the state, both the city and county's poverty rates come into line as well, said David Denslow, an economist with the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

"I think, then, that Alachua County's official poverty rate exceeds Florida's only because we have so many college and university students, most of whom are going to do quite well financially from a lifetime perspective," Denslow wrote in an e-mail. "That doesn't mean that Alachua County does not have a poverty problem. It means that the state and the nation have a poverty problem, and Alachua County is part of that broader picture, neither better nor worse."

In determining whether someone is below the poverty line for the American Community Survey, the Census Bureau uses a formula based on the size of a family and the number of minors it contains. For example, a family of three with one child less than 18 years old would be considered to be in poverty if the family's income was less than $16,000.

To some extent, the Census Bureau strives to take into account the impact specific populations can have on the results. The poverty figures, for example, don't take into account people living in dorms, military barracks or prisons, said Sharon Stern, chief of poverty and health statistics for the Census Bureau.

Even without the influence of students, Census officials urge caution when drawing conclusions from the poverty statistics. Gainesville's relatively small population yields survey results that often have a wide margin of error, Stern said.

For example, according to the survey, the number of people living below the poverty line in Gainesville was between 27,064 and 34,134 in 2006. Because it is unclear exactly where the actual number falls within that range, it is difficult to say how significant the new results are, Stern said.

Still, such statistics can be useful for spotting trends even if they cannot be used to pin down an exact number, she said.

"(The change) might look to be very big and yes it might be statistically significant and indicate direction, but it might not be the magnitude it appears," Stern said.

Nailing down the area's actual poverty rate has been an exercise that has frustrated local officials in recent years.

In 2005, the Alachua County Commission paid the Census Bureau to recalculate the poverty rate by excluding students. The report presented to county commissioners indicated that without students - 26,085 of whom met federal poverty guidelines - the poverty rate dropped from 22.8 percent to 13.9 percent.

Such discrepancies need to be taken into account when developing policies based on statistics that may be impacted by the area's student population, Denslow said. This includes areas like poverty and unemployment, which is traditionally lower in college towns because students are more likely to not be seeking work, he said.

"Numbers like this are interesting, in a sense it's a way of keeping score, but in this case this particular number is biased against us," Denslow said. "Just like for unemployment, they're probably biased in our favor."

Jeff Adelson can be reached at 352-374-5095 or adelsoj@gvillesun.com

1 comment:

Dunk said...

INTRODUCTION – Your Dreams Fulfilled

The following ideas and concepts have the potential to radically change your world for the better. Every aspect of your life could be enhanced and every dream you have could become a reality.

Every hope you’ve ever conceived,
Every need you’ve ever known,
Can easily be achieved

Welcome to the growing group of people on this planet who want more from life…

STAGE 1 – Understanding the physical world

The world exists outside of our heads. It’s there to be analysed and understood. It’s not a hard task. The organic material between your ears, your brain, is more than capable of understanding the current world situation.

You are connected.
You are not alone.
You are part of this world.
You have the solution within you.
The world needs you to do your part.
You need you to do your part.

You are connected to every one else on this planet. You may not feel it, but it’s a fact. A fact that can not be refuted, proved wrong, or even sensibly denied. Anyone that does deny it can be ridiculed, and you’ll see why…

Did you have a cup of tea this morning? Have you ever had a cup of tea? Do you drink coffee? If you’ve had any of these experiences, or you’re familiar with the concepts then the ideas below are going to make so much sense to you, and have such an impact on you and your life, that you’ll be asking why you’d never thought of it sooner and then you’ll be demanding that everyone begins to think it too.

Imagine the cup of tea that you had this morning and the process of creating that cup of tea. You took a cup, you boiled some water and you took a tea bag and placed it in that cup or in a tea pot. Now, stop for a second to imagine what that tea bag is, what it means and what it represents.

For that tea bag to exist at all, humans, no matter how far away or close to you, need to that have ploughed a field, planted tea bushes, tended tea bushes, nurtured them through their growth cycle, harvested the leaves, dried the leaves, packaged the leaves, transported the leaves and finally stacked the leaves in a shop where you could purchase them. You know all of these things to be solid, undeniable and verifiable facts.

You are connected to all of those humans in that chain of production as without them, you could have no tea bag. For you to have something as simple as a tea bag to put in a cup, to begin to make tea, there may have been thousands of humans involved. That Tea Bag is a result of their labours and their endeavours, no matter how unseen by you. The Tea Bag should have HumanityTM embossed on it. Those humans have lives, they exist. They have had a direct impact on your life as you are able to enjoy a cup of tea. You are connected to them. They are connected to you.

For, if it was not for you, using their tea bag, the fruits of their labours, their lives would be dramatically different.

And remember, that’s just the tea bag. Think about the kettle that you boiled the water in. Where did the water come from? And did you use gas or electricity to heat the water? Where did that energy supply come from? How many miles of pipes and pumps and wires had to be used? How many connected humans were involved?

And this is all so that you can have a cup of tea! You can now see that you are part of the collective of humanity on this planet, you are not alone; welcome to the realisation.

STAGE 2 – How we currently operate

The collection of humanity on this planet, though highly efficient at getting you the basics like tea and coffee, is currently organised in a very self defeating way.

You and I work for different companies. The companies that we work for may very well be in competition. Companies are only there to make a profit for the company. That is their role. That is their reason for existing. Someone had an idea to make money, and they started a business. All very well as far as it goes. However, now, at this period in our history, the idea of individual companies, working alone to produce the “next big thing”, is something that is holding you and I back from realising our full potential. That is, full potential of the productive capabilities of humans, of humanity, on this planet are being squandered by competition and the profit motive.

Again, this is very easy to demonstrate and again, it’s undeniable.

For example, take two competing drugs companies; you work for one and I work for the other one. Both companies are in business to make a profit and as such they are pouring millions of dollars into research and development to find the next big cure for blindness, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, paralysis, HIV, or pick an ailment or condition that’s close to your heart.

We know that the humans that make up the work force of these companies are members of the collective of humanity that brought us the humble tea bag. So we know that each member of that collective would benefit from a break through in any new treatment; you and I included. ¬¬

So let us assume that the solution that both of these companies are working on will take 10 years to develop. Now what if, after 5 years, the company that you’re working for has half of the solution and the company that I’m working for has the other half of the solution? As a collective, as humanity, we have the whole solution. You know half of it, and I know half of it. So, in theory, we could actually bring it to the other members of the human collective directly. That is after 5 years, not 10. We could half the time that it currently takes to share the break through, as we have all the pieces.

That is, we, as a collection, have done all the work we need to do as both halves of the solution are now known. However, given the fact that we are working for companies that are in competition, for greater and greater profits, the solution will not flow to the members of the global society as no one company owns the whole solution. In theory it will take each company another 5 years to fully understand the solution thus any benefits for humanity are delayed by that time. Even then the companies will only release a product if they can realise a profit from it.

We have just worked out how, with this one example, capitalism is not best suited to the needs of you and I and humanity. In case you think this is just a one off, let us examine the case of mobile phones and competition within that sector..

Mobile phones, at least in the UK, are used for 3 main tasks; sending text messages, making phone calls and sending multi media messages such as pictures and sound files.

You are more than aware of these functions and I dare say you’ve used at least one of them and if not, you know people that have. Now, in the UK there is competition, again, from Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone etc, etc. Each of these providers may erect separate radio masts to build their coverage foot print. So potentially we could have 4 or more different masts covering the same geographical area because each of the operators wants coverage in that particular area, of course. That’s competition.

No matter which provider you choose to be your mobile phone carrier the service you get at the end will be very much the same from one to the other. You’ll be able to make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages etc. The major criteria that you’ll have used in your decision will be how many minutes and text messages you get for your monthly outlay.

So instead of distributing mobile phone capabilities to each geographical area once, we, as an unconscious act of the collective and as a direct result of competition and the profit motive of Orange, O2, T-Mobile etc, have actually rolled out enough radio masts, computers, switches and cables to cover each geographical area 4 or more times. However, if we had, as a collective, been working towards providing for the collective, instead of working within competing companies, we could have covered the UK 4 times over in the time that it took us to do it once. We all could have had the benefits of mobile communications sooner than we actually did.

At this stage in our human development we are holding back the potential of humanity on this planet by organising in competing companies. We are holding ourselves back from achieving. We are wasting time. We are squandering our resources. We are distracting ourselves from our full potential.

The current system discards and overlooks a huge number of humans on this planet as they have no practical benefit to the current system; capitalism.

If you condone the current organisational method, in light of this logical evidence, then you are part of the problem. The world needs you to rethink, and understand that a shift in emphasis from working for competing companies and their profit motive to actually working for humanity would bring untold freedoms and benefits to you, your family, your friends, your loved ones, your neighbours.

You are part of the solution if you take these concepts forward. Tell more people about them. Spread them around. Your future depends on it.

STAGE 3 – Imagine The Future

So now we’ve discussed the idea of the collective and of humanity wasting time it’s time to consider what it could mean for us to organise ourselves differently.

Imagine a place and time when all of our endeavours as humans are used for our benefit. No more working for some company’s profit. No more distractions from the needs of humans. No more impediments to you getting exactly what you want from this life. No more antagonism amongst humans. An understanding that each human, if they play their part in the collective, can reap any and all of the rewards of that collective.

Imagine the number of people we can also bring into the system to work towards the goals of the collective. All those people that are currently disregarded by the system; the countless millions in “under-developed” [have you ever asked yourself why?] countries.

With all of these extra resources, we can half the working week or even make it two days long or so. Who knows how we will decide to organise the massive resource on this planet that is the collective community of humanity.

And no enlightened community of humanity would ever decide to make any decision that did not best fit the needs of the community as that would be akin to suicide. Only the best decisions for the collective would be made. Think what that would mean for governmental organisations? Would we require them? Maybe we’d need some form of “commodity request list” or “goals list” that we could all view and prioritise, with the most obviously important goals being raised to the top of the list with ease. How about eradicating famine, poverty, diseases, war, global pollution etc? What about planting trees to form lungs for the planet? What about designing technology that can clean the atmosphere?

If we organise ourselves with us as the priority then all the material items that we struggle to collect just now such as houses, cars, gadgets, and even just the basics of food and water will flow to us as a logical consequence. Far from compromising or goals and our desires, by organising for humans, we can achieve them all! And more importantly we can bring the endeavours of every human on the plant to bear for our well being. Each human who is cast aside by the current system of capitalist production and its insatiable drive for greater and greater profits will be brought into the global collection of working productive humanity and they will be able to influence and bolster that global community. Hence, all of our lives become infinitely better and immeasurably easier.

The solution needs you. It needs everyone you know. So how big is this task? Can we do it? Well, the maths says we can.

The population of this earth is somewhere in the region of 6,000,000,000 (6 Billion or 6 Thousand million). So that makes any effort you make alone, as an “individual”, equivalent to 1/6 Billionth of the effort needed to realise all of your hopes and dreams.

However, if in the first instance, you can tell just 10 people, of this way of thinking, and they feel as passionately as you do about it, and they set themselves the same goal of just telling 10 people, then the numbers soon become very large indeed;

You – 10 – 100 – 1,000 – 10,000 – 100,000 – 1,000,000 – 10,000,000 – 100,000,000, 1,000,000,000, The World!

Just 10 iterations! That is, just 10 times the process of telling 10 folk and the whole world would know! So the chain that you start, by telling 10 folk about these ideas and about your passion for them, will only have to be repeated 10 times and we can all share in the understandings!

You have the solution within you. The world needs you to do your part.
You need you to do your part.

When you know how it works; it’s easy to change the world!