Below 25000 and 2027488001 for all others. James, you are next from massachusetts. Hello . Caller mi actually on tv . Host you are, go ahead. Caller i had no idea. Im site i was not prepared. I am an individual who spend a lot of time in school. I have a lot of education yet i found myself making basically welfare wages. Im curious what you would say about this middle class. I have 200,000 in student loans. I make about 25,00030,000 dollars a year. I have no idea where this is going, frankly. Guest it is a very good question and something we have been tracking at the Pew Research Center for a while. Looking at the ways americans exceed themselves and rather not they see themselves as part of the middle class and to what it takes to be part of the middle class. Perhaps one of the most interesting Public Opinion results we have had is that we take a look at you asked americans, do you expect or chip in to have a better standard of living than you do now . You start to see Many Americans of saying, no, we do not expect our children to be better off in the future than they are now. That is an indication or a collection of some of the challenges that you just outlined. Everything from student debt to maybe people pursuing education but sometimes those particular degrees do not translate into significantly higher wage, particularly with large student debt. These are things we have been looking at as parts of the broader story around what has been happening with the american middle class. Certainly your sentiments are sentiments we have seen in many Public Opinion surveys of broad and part of the American Public. Host in massachusetts, go ahead. Caller thank you for taking my call. I had to questions for the data on hispanic americans and hispanic immigrants. Did you segregate metrics between puerto rican hispanics versus citizens or immigrants from mexico, central america, and latin america . And my second question, or a nonsurvey question about africanamerican performance you know, i really think it is the lack of a twoparent household going back 6070 years really and i think social support is well intended while intended and decades of Public Housing, food vouchers. You know, i do not think they are working because you tend to segregate africanamericans into just large blocks of underachieving. There are no role models, there is no middle class residents were they used to be in American Cities with a High Industrial base, you would have a strong middle class that would be aspirational for people in the lower rungs of their demographic. I am curious about puerto rican performance because i believe that they mirror, in my opinion because they have been segregated in Public Housing etc. On the success or failure of i think africanamericans in this country. Host thank you. Guest very good question, susan. Puerto ricans versus others for this particular report, we did not do an analysis for poverty rates for Puerto Ricans versus mexicanamericans versus cubans, versus dominicans etc. One of the things we have done is take a look at poverty rates generally for these hispanic origin groups. Yes, the poverty rate for Puerto Ricans is higher than other hispanic origin groups, but many hispanic origin groups have high poverty rates higher than what you see for whites generally. The one group of hispanic that generally has a lower poverty rate is actually cubanamericans. And also many hispanics who trace their roots to south america. These are groups are you have a high share of people with a College Degree and many folks in this particular group also have high median household incomes. There are indeed differences. In terms of africanamericans and an africanamerican in the middle class and some of the broad economic changes that have happened in the United States over the course of the last 50 years have not only impacted them africanamerican middle class but probably impacted the u. S. Middle class overall. Many americans who used to have middleclass jobs working in manufacturing for example have seen those jobs disappear over the course of the last 30 years or 40s. Of course, the economy is always transitioning and in the process of transition, some jobs and subsectors of the economy are hit harder than others. But there interesting questions and to like. Host reporting that there are many people, tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans coming to the United States because of its current economic conditions. Guest yes, some of the research we have done suggest that about 70,000 people have been coming annually from the island to the United States. 20,000 return every year so it is a net of about 50,000 but we are seeing this accelerate. A lot seems to be related to finding a job. Why you come into the United States and one of the big reasons is to find a job. Host william is up next. Hello. Caller yes, my question is a lot of black unemployment is because other nationalities are coming in and the people that own the workplaces are usually white man. They take them over black males and i see it in workplaces because i worked in factories. Now you go into work factories and it is 80 90 mexicans and they are taking all the jobs. We always had that problem in america being black. The white man always take every other group even though we work and die to build this country and every other group they take them before us. And thank you. Guest interesting comment. Certainly we have seen a growth in the number of people from other countries coming to United States. The u. S. Has more than 40 Million Immigrants today. Any of those immigrants are of working age, so when you take a look at the labor dissipation rate of immigrants, they tend to be higher than they are for the American Public generally. Many immigrants are taking jobs in different sectors, not just a manufacturing. We are also seeing immigrants in positions such as professors or positions in the tech industry. There has been a broad onsite, the population has certainly been engaged in the labor market in the United States in a number of different areas and not just in manufacturing. Host Mark Hugo Lopez of Pew Research Center joining us. This is teresa. Hello. Caller good morning. I live in tennessee and i know many, many people in tennessee and kentucky on food stamps, and the first thing they do at the first of the month when they get the card is to sell them for pain pills or drugs and they get . 50 on the dollar for them. That supports their drug habit so they do not feed their kids. Their kids are fed through the School System so they do not have to worry about by nutrition for their children. And they will not find a job but they make more money statement on their butt doing their drugs and accepting welfare than they ever would with the job. They have free childcare, subsidized housing, so it enables people not to find a job and to stay in poverty and i would like your comment on that. To like. Guest very interesting question. When you take a look at, for example, people who are in poverty. There are many got participated in poverty programs for a number of years. The persistence of poverty for some parts of the American Public is, well, many people in persistent poverty for many, many years and about. It is hard to draw a firm conclusion on your particular question because there is so much your question, but certainly there are some parts of the public that to participate in poverty for many, many years. Host yanna, you are next. Caller good morning. I and an africanamerican middleclass woman in maryland. I am a social worker. I really have a question i do not know how Much Research has been done in terms of africanamericans, what are some of the issues that are really impacting the africanamerican race with being able to keep up and to raise up in terms of the Poverty Level . I heard someone earlier talk about the fact that white folks giving them opportunities and others talked about the system. I also had conversations with the blood that talk about with people that talk about the system does not allow people to be selfsufficient, kind of helping people to stay stuck. As a social worker, i can see both sides of the coin. Has there been any research that has gotten into the wise so we can get to the real mean for not just africanamericans but poor people in general, specifically africanamerican so we can understand, what is this stuckness about . Has to be research that has pointed it out . Guest very good question. I think there is a lot of research out there that has looked into this and it sort of point to one particular research. Particularly education because education is one of the main vehicles that can help somebody achieve in the United States today. For example, when you take a look at the share of africanamericans up a College Degree, that share is about 20 of people 25 and older. For hispanics, 50 , lower number. The whites, 30 something percent, for asians, more than half. For hispanics 15 , lower number. The whites, 30 something percent, for asians more than half. That is not going to be a solution for everybody, but it is one of the ways in which one can reduce the poverty rate for one particular group. Host from iona, michigan judy is joining us with Mark Hugo Lopez. Hello. Caller hello . Host hi, you are on. Caller of his. I have a concern about the prison population in michigan probably elsewhere i am sure but i live in michigan. I know that it is very bad and they are blessing these inmates from one prison to the other constantly blessing these inmates from one prison to the other constantly and im not sure what the point is and it is costing the taxpayers millions of dollars. If there is a way we can reduce the prison population, even if it is to put them in Halfway Houses with monitors on them to keep track of them, it would just make more sense then to keep just piling one on top of the other and busting them and bussing them from prison to prison and costing the state millions of dollars. I just do not understand it. Guest you have a really interesting point. We take a look at who is imprisoned africanamericans and latino males particularly, are more likely to be imprisoned than any other group of americans. Many even served many years in prison. Of course, once one had spent time in prison, that can have major impact on the types of jobs of that one being able to get once one leaves prison. In terms of the nations prison population, it is population has overrepresentation of block and white men. This is one of the challenges for both the communities and something that plays a role and impact in poverty rates. In terms of the question about taxpayers paying for prisons and what happens, particularly in michigan, i am not familiar with what is happening in michigan but it is an interesting question. Host Pew Research Center also includes that black children chair population 23. 7 and 34. 8 in poverty for blacks. Hispanic children chair 32 point 9 and hispanics in poverty 42. 5 . You reference this before, but what would you like to add on as far as this research . Guest this is an example wasted overrepresentation of poverty among hispanic children. For example, we talk about hispanic children, a greater share of all people in poverty who are hispanic children that are representation children overall in the hispanic population. It only shows you that much of the impact of poverty in the latino and Africanamerican Community is really young people, not necessarily equally distributed across the population. Host harrisburg, pennsylvania, wayne, good morning to you. Hello. Caller i would like to know that everybody who came on the phone that was talking, i went to go another way. What about the psychological aspect . Ok, i have been here 50 years. A person can get locked up on the same corner then a week later, there is another person that are selling drugs. If a person got killed in that same spot, there is another person that comes up there. I had watched this for good years happen. It has to be psychological. You need to have some psychiatrists appear to try and figure out what is the psyche of these young black men. That is all i have to say. Guest i would say that the same would apply to young hispanics as well and also other groups of you people who live in poverty. I think this is not only a challenge for the africanamerican males but for others, too. Host from ashburn, virginia jimmy is next for our guest. Caller hi, good morning. This is a very interesting conversation. Africanamerican male here so all the comments they are all right on. I would like to know a couple things. Number one, how did you collect your data . Number two, what are the figures for each of the areas, each of the nationalities . In other words, how many africanamericans . How many asians . So we can get a better idea of the magnitude of this problem. Also, in your analytics, someone mentioned the prisons. A lot of folks are incarcerated because of mandatory sentences. You know, they might have a small amount of marijuana or something and then they go straight to jail. And when they get out and they tried to get or fill out a job application, they have to put this information on their and that is automatically going to get them a denial for a job. These are a lot of the things that if you put those in your analytics, give us an idea of how many folks cannot get a job because of that simple thing that they went to jail because of some small amount, some minor host got you, thank you. Guest first, the data, what is the data come from . It is from the u. S. Census bureau, collected by the u. S. Census bureau, part of an annual Data Collection that particularly looks at income poverty, and health insurance. A survey of over 150,000 people nationwide and it is representative of the nation as a whole. Again, something that has been double sometime since the 1970s, this has been a regular piece of research that has produced by the federal government looking at poverty in the United States. Your second question, what is the magnitude of these numbers . Lets talk about the childhood poverty numbers how many africanamerican children live in poverty . 4. 2 million. There are 4. 2 million africanamerican children living in poverty out of the 14. 7 million children overall who live in poverty. How many hispanic children . About 5 million. How many white children . 4. 1 million. You can to the magnitude of these numbers. We talk abou africanamerican children living in poverty, that poverty rate is at 38 . That is hard at what he does for hispanics at 30 and higher for whites which is below 15 . Taking a look at poverty rates of rob, you can see that africanamericans poverty rates overall, you can see that African Americans are on the higher rate. You asked about the role of spending time in prison, having a felony conviction and what that might mean for job later on. You are right that this has an important impact on peoples jobs prospects whether they are africanamerican or not. Once they leave prison and this is something the president has been trying to address in the last week or so, visiting a prison and also talking a lot about changing, perhaps, some of the ways in which sentencing is done, it particular person small drug violations. All of this is something that impacts africanamerican men particularly and something i think you will probably see more discussion because it seems to be something many researchers are focusing on more than before. Host what statistics tell us about people moving out of poverty guest interesting, not everybody lives of poverty for their whole lives. People come and go, so there is the cycling in and out of poverty. A lot of times they fall into poverty because of a job loss. A job loss leads to a family falling into poverty but eventually there may be a couple of months of poverty and they may move out. That is the story for most people but there are some people who are in poverty for many, many years, perhaps even decades. And that is the persistent poverty problem which is somewhat more challenging to address. Host from germantown, maryland, clem, hello. Caller hi, i have been listening to this conversation and it is rather interesting and enlightening at the same time. I think this is really a vicious and terrible cycle in the sense that it is not a problem which comes out to the front on its own. It is actually a problem that is inclined in so many other social statures. For example, i am looking at the africanamerican side the major call of this is the mentality that people have with regards to africanamericans their children are born into this and they just grow up im talking about the social ills that we have in this country. Before i even go there, i wanted to ask you how do we compare to the rest of the world . In the countries where Child Poverty do we rank amongst them . Or is the rate of poverty of children better than the rest of the world . Host clem, we will let our guest respond to that. How does the u. S. Shall poverty rate compared to other countries . Guest you take a look at European Countries are other developed countries like the United States, the United States has a higher poverty rate for children then you see in other parts of the developed world. When you compare the United States to other countries, say countries in latin america, or africa, or agent that are not part or asia that are not part of the broader developed well you do to be was poverty rate is not as high as you see in some of these other parts of the country. We just published a re