When I wrote “Passionate Justice” I was fortunate to work with a terrific editor, Elizabeth Langosy. Among the tasks terrific editors do is check stats writers, and the press, can so easily throw about. I’m grateful Elizabeth is a tenacious stickler.

     In an essay about poverty a few years back, I wrote that Americans often conflate what they imagine to be the percentage of American children living in poverty with the percentage of our children in welfare-receiving families, thinking that there’s something close to a one-to-one correspondence.

     There isn’t.

     In an essay from the book, (When She Was a Filthy Turn of Phrase: On the Dole), I said that the percentage of poor children living in welfare-receiving families was roughly 12%. I had used a secondary source for that, a source in the popular press, and, in any case, no longer up-to-date. Elizabeth thought, and I agreed, that we should get a newer and more rigorous source. I was surprised to learn from the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University’s  School of Public Health —  a lead researcher there was kind enough to look through his data over several days  — 

 — that the percentage of American children in poverty who live in welfare-receiving families was, in 2011 4.4%. 

     This is to say that not only was my original source in the popular press pretty off-base, but that we really need to alter our understanding of what poverty is if we’re interested in making a positive difference.

     This is also to say that whether or not one subscribes to government definitions of a poverty-line, of what constitutes families-living-in-poverty, we must realize that the great majority of adults who are poor do not qualify for welfare because they are the working-poor, earn too much to receive welfare. Their kids do not benefit from welfare at all.

     It’s a hell of a bind our poorer kids are in.