African American Average Income

  $34,218 is the median income for African American Households. 24.7% live in poverty with 19.1% of single-African Americans without the benefit of health insurance. The number of African American children born into poverty was 43% in 1968. That number was increased to 46% in 1987, and has dropped by one percent since then. There are many specific reasons why African Americans seem to continually maintain high poverty in the United States. These reasons can be linked to lack of education, as well as job opportunities, and discrimination. The Work Force has a huge impact on race and poverty. All of these reasons can and will affect the children of our future and the future lifestyle of the United States and very well will affect the American Dream.

A very famous picture that shows a line of African Americans standing in front of a sign that represents the American Dream. Only this sign, shows just a white family.

Since the beginning of World War II, for years and years after, real wages and living standards rose continuously for the average American person who works for a living.Then , in the middle of the 1960s, the War on Poverty was declared, the poor were looked at as the people who were left behind. They(African Americans) were not sharing in social contract because they were a racial minority. African Americans were pushed further and further away from the typical white lifestyle. Lack of job opportunities, education, as well as discrimination played a huge role in the economic status of African Americans. Also, you faced a much harder and harsher life if you were an African American female. It was double the discrimination because of your sex and the color of your skin. Not to mention however, even though times have changed and African Americans are recognized more in American Society, those issues are still what African Americans have to face and put up with because they're skin is not pale.

An elderly African American woman who lives in poverty bundles up in an American Flag blanket while the wealthiest nation in the world sits back and does nothing to help.

These problems African Americans deal with everyday has put them in positions where they live shorter, unhealthier life expectancies than White people do. Infant mortality rates among Africans are 15 for every 1000 births while for whites, around 6 for every 1000 births.