To test your understanding of the nature of economic hardship in America today, one simple question has long been useful. This month's release of new social and economic data from the Census Bureau's always fascinating American Community Survey provides fresh, 2014 facts to supply the answer.
Here's the question: What is the stronger predictor of poverty in the U.S. today — race or family structure?
It's not a close call.
Nationwide, according to the new census data, black families of all types with children under 18 were more than twice as likely as white families with kids to be statistically poor in 2014 (32.1 percent vs. 14.5 percent).
It's a large and troubling disparity. But here's a larger and more troubling one:
Single-mother households with kids, regardless of race, were five times more likely to be poor than married couple families (40.6 percent to 8.2 percent).
When one compares similarly structured families, racial gaps remain in the nationwide poverty rates, but they are much smaller. For example, 10.7 percent of black married-couple families were poor last year, compared with 7 percent of similar white families.
But single parenthood is profoundly associated with poverty across all racial lines.