Can poor people have HDTVs?

Poverty is in the news again: "US poverty on track to reach 46-year high" says a headline in The Washington Post.

And so is the topic of what constitutes poverty in the U.S. Just how bad is it? Muses a CNNMoney headline: "Are you poor if you have a flat-screen TV?" The article says:

For instance, some 62% of households earning less than $20,000 annually owned between two and four televisions, according to the 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy. That compares to 68% of those earning $120,000 or more.

About one-third of the lowest income households had either LCD or plasma TVs. Granted, that's less than half the share of the highest income group, but conservative researchers say it's a sign that the consumption gap is narrowing.

Liberals and conservatives can't seem to get enough of this debate, which got a big shot in the arm when the conservative Heritage Foundation released a study by Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield last year: Among its findings:

• 80% of poor families have air conditioning.
• 92% have a microwave.
• Almost two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
• More than half of poor households with children have a video game system.
• Half of poor households have a computer and 43% have Internet access.
• A third have a plasma or LCD TV, and a quarter have a digital video recorder.

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Of course, poor Americans do not live in the lap of luxury. The poor clearly struggle to make ends meet, but they are generally struggling to pay for cable TV, air conditioning, and a car, as well as for food on the table. The average poor person is far from affluent, but his lifestyle is far from the images of stark deprivation purveyed equally by advocacy groups and the media.

To which Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy responded (sarcastically):

So fret not, poor folks. To join, or rejoin, the middle class, apparently all you have to do is drop Comcast or Fios and turn off the thermostat.

New census figures on the number of Americans living beneath the poverty line are due out this fall. In anticipation, The Associated Press interviewed experts in the field and came to this conclusion:

The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1% in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7%. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

The Census Bureau said 46.2 million Americans were poor in 2010, 14.5 million more than at the beginning of the century. The poverty line for a family of four was $22,113 in 2010.

All of this means that more people who weren't in poverty will find themselves there.

Information from other reports provides more detail about many Americans' reality:

• "More than 17 million women lived in poverty in 2010, and nearly 44% of these women (7.5 million) lived in extreme poverty, with incomes less than half of the federal poverty level," said a report (.pdf file) by the National Women's Law Center. Also, "Over 16.4 million children lived in poverty in 2010, close to half of whom (44.9%) lived in extreme poverty."
• 48% of Americans -- 146.4 million people -- were either in poverty or were low income, meaning they earned between 100% and 199% of the poverty level, USA Today reported late last year.

That's a lot of people, and we can pretty well guarantee that most have refrigerators and microwaves, and many have flat-screen TVs and pay for cable. And cellphones or even smartphones.

Do you agree with those who think the hardships of poverty have been exaggerated by the media? Rector told CNN: "If you took the typical poor household and put them on TV, no one would think they are poor. They struggle to make ends meet, but they are not in any type of deprivation."

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Or does that thinking miss the point? Carol King wrote at the Ms. Blog at Ms. Magazine in response to The Heritage Foundation's report:

The fact that so many of them had those things before they slid into poverty doesn't seem to matter. This mean-spirited attitude implies that poor people who dare to have any modern conveniences are masking how well-off they really are. This is an attempt to deflect any discussion of the causes of the economic collapse and why there's a growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots.

"Tazlima" attempted to provide some perspective in a post called "So what ARE poor people allowed to have?" on What to Expect, a parenting blog:

I'm in a financially tight situation, so this hits close to home. I have a pretty nice car that's paid off. Could we save money on insurance if we sold it? Sure, but I've also considered that if things got REALLY bad, I could sleep in it, so it has extra value to me beyond getting me to work every day. Internet access is essential to applying for jobs in the modern world, so you have to have that in some form. If it costs more in gas to drive to the library every day to apply for jobs (and libraries usually have time limits on their usage), then it's worthwhile to pay for that access even when times are hard. And don't tell me you don't need the Internet. DH has gone into countless places looking for work, and what do they tell him? "Yeah, we have openings, you go to such-and-such website and apply online."

More on MSN Money:

• When poor people have nice things
• Poverty has a new address: Suburbia
• Calculator: How much house can you afford?
• America's own Third World
• The poorest counties in America
• Calculator: How much vehicle can you afford?