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9.4 Million More Americans Below Poverty Line Than Pre-Crisis [Chart]

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9.4 Million More Americans Below Poverty Line Than Pre-Crisis [Chart]

What Recovery? [Chart]

9.4 Million More Americans Below Poverty Line Than Pre-Crisis

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

According to Janet Yellen, we are still on pace to raise rates in 2015. While the rate hike was supposed to happen this month, it got derailed by the August market selloff, volatility in China, lackluster work force numbers, and a variety of other factors.

Despite the Fed continuing to kick this down the road, they continue to claim that we are in the middle of an ongoing recovery. There’s just one problem with that: things are getting worse than pre-crisis levels for millions of the poorest Americans.

It’s true that the wealthiest 10% of Americans have finally seen their household incomes rise above the levels last seen in 2007. It’s also true that median incomes have “recovered” from the worst of the 2008 disaster. Median earners were -8.1% worse off in 2011, and now they are only -6.5% worse off according to most recent data for 2014 released by the U.S. Census Bureau last week.

However, when we look at the lowest 10% of income earners, the situation is much more precarious. In 2011, the bottom 10% of households were -9.0% worse off in terms of income than they were pre-crisis. Since then, it hasn’t gotten any better: they now are making -11.6% less income than they were in 2007.

Possibly even more concerning is the fact that the amount of Americans living below the poverty line has soared since 2007. There are now 9.4 million more people that can claim to be a part of this unfortunate group, and the total contingent living below the poverty line now makes up 14.8% of all Americans. This is also an increase from the 12.5% figure from before the Great Recession.

What’s the difference between 2007 and today? One stark contrast is the fact that the Fed’s balance sheet has exploded by adding $3.5 trillion of phony money to its balance sheet (that’s about the size of Germany’s economy) with its Quantitative Easing (QE) program. As part of the same experiment, it kept rates artificially low at near 0% for a record amount of time to encourage both lending and economic growth.

However, it is seven years later, and we are starting to see the fruits of this experiment especially in terms of wealth inequality. Studies and economists are starting to sound off, noting that QE and ZIRP have been a failure for America’s poorest. We explained the basics in a previous chart, but here’s some other articles worth reading from Forbes, WSJ, and SCMP that help show the effect of these policies.

By the way, the St. Louis Fed has essentially admitted QE was a mistake, while the Philadelphia Fed also admitted that these policies likely helped cause income inequality. Even fragilista economist Joseph Stiglitz has said this summer that ZIRP has helped increase income inequality.

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Who Expects to Get Richer in 2024, by Both Generation and Gender

A survey of 600 high net worth individuals revealed there’s one subset of people who are confident of making it in 2024.

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A cropped graph showing the percentage of people surveyed in the Knight Frank Next Gen Survey, sorted by generation and gender, and whether they anticipate a wealth increase in 2024.

Who Expects to Get Richer in 2024, by Generation and Gender

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on Apple or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

The jury is still out on how the global economy is expected to perform in 2024, but as seen during the pandemic, economic turmoil sometimes provides opportunities for the wealthy.

We visualize the percentage of high net worth individual (HNWI) respondents who expect their wealth to increase in 2024, categorized by generation and gender, from the Knight Frank Next Gen Survey, accessible in their latest wealth report.

The survey covered 600 global HNWIs, who are individuals with more than $1 million in assets or make more than $200,000 a year, and then categorized their responses by gender and generation.

Affluent Gen Z Women Eye Financial Gains in 2024

At a glance, there’s a very apparent generational difference in the expectations of getting richer in 2024.

About half (52%) of the surveyed Baby Boomers think their assets will grow, compared to Gen X (56%), Millennials, (69%), and Gen Z (75%).

GroupMaleFemaleOverall
👴 Boomer53%50%52%
👩‍🦳 Gen X56%56%56%
👩‍🦱 Millennial75%64%69%
🧑‍🦰 Gen Z69%81%75%
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 All Generations68%63%65%

Note: Percentage of respondents who said they expect their wealth will increase in 2024.

There’s also a noticeable gender difference. Men tend to be more optimistic than women, with one glaring exception.

A staggering 81% of the surveyed high net worth Gen Z women expect to make hay this year, making them the most optimistic of all the groups.

This corroborates a trend where Gen Z women were also the most optimistic in retirement planning. As CNBC reports, a combination of newer avenues of financial resources, and an openness towards advice, has given them a more optimistic attitude than their older counterparts.

Meanwhile, American Millennials are expected to become the richest generation ever as a $90 trillion asset transfer between Boomer parents and Millennial children begins to take place over the next two decades.

A huge percentage of that wealth comes in the form of property assets accumulated by generations before them. This especially includes houses, whose prices have skyrocketed over the last two decades.

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