Financial Stats

Income

• 63 percent of U.S. families below the federal poverty line have one or more workers, according to the Census Bureau. (Source: Michelle Conlin and Aaron Bernstein. “Working…and Poor”, Business Week, May 31, 2004)
• 3.5 million full-time workers earned less than poverty-level wages. (Source: Thomas Z. Freedman. “How to Really Help Low-Wage Workers,” The Washington Post, February 2, 2007)
• More than 28 million people, about a quarter of the workforce between the ages of 18 and 64, earn less than $9.04 an hour, which translates into a full-time salary of $18,800 a year. (Source: Michelle Conlin and Aaron Bernstein. “Working…and Poor”, Business Week, May 31, 2004)
• One out of three households use credit cards to cover basic living expenses – including rent, mortgage payments, groceries, utilities and insurance. (Source: The Plastic Safety Net: The Reality Behind Debt in America, Demos and the Center for Responsible Lending, October 2005)

Savings

•  The personal savings rate in 2006 (as a percentage of disposable income) was a negative 1 percent, the lowest in 73 years. (Source: U.S. Department of Commerce)
• 10-23 percent of lower-income households — 25 to 56 million adults — do not have a bank account and are without access to mainstream financial institutions and services. (Source: Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, 2001, and the General Accounting Office’s “Electronic Transfers,” Report to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, House of Representatives, September 2002)
• Personal bankruptcy rates have increased 350 percent since 1980; more than 2 million people filed for bankruptcy in 2005. Most bankruptcies aren't the result of overspending. Harvard University’s Consumer Bankruptcy Project found that only 4.3 percent of all consumer bankruptcies in 2001 were filed solely as a result of credit-card debt. (Source: Thomas A. Garrett, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)
• Credit card debt in America has tripled, from $238 million in 1990 to over $850 billion today. (The Democracy Protection Act: 40 Ways Toward a More Perfect Union, New Democracy Project, Demos, The Nation, and Brennan Center for Justice, February 20, 2007)
•  The average American has $9,000 in credit card debt. Credit card debt totals $800 billion. (Source: The Plastic Safety Net: The Reality Behind Debt in America, Demos and the Center for Responsible Lending, October 2005)

Assets

• One third of U.S. households have zero or negative net financial assets, and half of U.S. households have less than $1,000 in net financial assets. (Source: Oliver and Shapiro, T. 1995. Black Wealth/White Wealth. Chapter 4, page 87-89)
•  Only one in four U.S. households have assets to survive at the poverty level for three months. (Source: Haveman, R. & Wolff, E. 2001. Who are the Asset Poor? Levels, Trends, and Composition, 1983-1998. Madison, WI: Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison)
•  More than 70 million Americans lack access to a tax-subsidized payroll-deduction saving plan. (Source: Calabrese, M. & MacGuineas, M. January 2003, Spendthrift Nation. The Atlantic Monthly)
•  The federal government spends over $300 billion a year to enable non-poor households to accumulate assets-tax deductions for home mortgage interest, favorable treatment for contributions to retirement or college-savings plans, myriad benefits for small business ownership, and stock investment. However, these benefits are beyond the reach of low-income households: over 90 percent of tax benefits for asset building accrue to households earning more than $50,000 a year. (Source: Joint Committee on Taxation, Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office)