MANDEL SCHOOL
NEWS AND EVENTS
March 26, 2012
News: Rep. Marcy Kaptur Says that the Poorest in America are Women
Politfact Ohio fact-checked Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur's statement that the poorest in America are women, and called on Professor Claudia Coulton to give expert advice on the data behind the Congresswoman's statement. Professor Coulton's research as Co-Director of the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development, lends strong suport to the statement, as well as the US census data provided in the Politifact article.
The article states, "The numbers indeed show that the poverty rate for women in the United States was 14.5 percent in 2010, which was 3.3 percentage points higher than for men.
Women also fared worse when comparisons were made within ethnic groups, such as white (non-Hispanic), black, Hispanic, Asian and native American. For instance, slightly more than 25 percent of all African-American women were in poverty in 2010, compared with 19.1 percent for African-American men.
Greater numbers of women also tended to be poor when broken down by age groups. More than 25 percent of women 18-24 years of age are in poverty, compared with 18.8 percent for men in the same age group."
The Politifact article, can be found here.
The Center's freely available database of Economic and Neighborhood indicators, NEO CANDO can be found here.
The Center is located within the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University.