U.S. ‘new poor’

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32777, 30 November 1971, Page 15

U.S. ‘new poor’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Nov. 29. A United States Senate panel has called on the Government to provide emergency food supplies for a new kind of poor—well educated and highly skilled professionals in Seattle who have been hit by an economic depression. The Senate Nutrition Committee, describing the situation in once-booming Seattle as an economic disaster. said that many families there were going hungry, unemployment was running at 13 per cent, the highest in the country.

The crisis is caused by sharp cuts in the payroll of the Boeing Aircraft Company and related firms from cancellation of the American supersonic transport aircraft and a general recession in the aviation industry.

The Senate committee, describing Seattle’s unemployed as the “new poor,” said that thev owned houses, cars, life insurance policies, even luxuries such as boats, yet did not have enough money to eat.

The committee reported: “Unemployment compensation. combined with careful planning and husbanding of other resources, has enabled most families to retain the assets of a lifetime’s work. “The irony of the assets of the new poor is that they have only bargain sale value on the open market, and therefore could only be sold at staggering losses.” Yet these assets make many of those who were out of work ineligible for existing Federal and local programmes that provided food for the poor, the panel said.