Why the headline “Children being born in the United States today have 50% chance of being in near poverty” is misleading – Surprisingly strange: "A headline that has been making rounds on the internet claims that almost half of children born in the United States live near poverty. This statement, however, is misleading and is, in essence, a tautology that gets its shocking figure by stretching the definition of words such as “near” and “almost” to their breaking point.
The largest problem with the headline is that it only work when you define near poverty as”$48,072 for a family of four with two children in 2015″ which is stretching the word “near” to its breaking point. The average household income in the United States is only “$51,939” so defining “$48,000″ as being near poverty will include more than 40% of the population in the figure. A less misleading headline would be ” A child has a 40% chance of being born in the bottom 40% American household” which is far more accurate and also slightly disturbing but isn’t going to get people to click on it and be outraged."
'via Blog this'