During his 1976 presidential campaign, former President Ronald Reagan introduced the “Welfare Queen.” Although Linda Taylor, the real welfare queen, was a White woman who had defrauded the health and services, the Social Security Administration, and Veterans Affairs out of over $100,000, many ignored that she was White. Regan’s description of the fraudulent behavior confirmed suspicions about welfare recipients, which, combined with other dog whistle statements during his campaign, fueled the false narrative that the stereotypical welfare queen was an indolent Black woman.
Stereotypes provide fodder for a myriad of false narratives. Margaret Simms points out the model minority stereotype may cause many to overlook the varied economic status of Asian Americans. In 2021, 9.3% of Asians lived in poverty (had incomes below the poverty threshold), up from 8.1% in 2020. Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure, researchers found higher poverty estimates, 9.5% in 2021 vs 8.8% in 2020. Asians comprised 5.1% of Americans living in poverty and were 6.4% of the U.S. population. Additionally, 15.1% of Asian (including Pacific Islanders) female-headed households (spouse absent) were in poverty.
Single Mothers
Our study is part of a larger project on economic mobility; therefore, if a household had multiple mothers, each mother was counted separately. A single mother is defined as a person who identified as a female between the ages of 15 and 50 with her own child in the household, and that child is under the age of 18, and no spouse was present in the household. The data come from the 2022 Annual Social and Economic Supplement and do not allow for the disaggregation of Asians or Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders by ethnicity.
Forty-two percent of single Asian mothers had incomes at or below the Federal poverty line. A smaller share of single Hawaiin/Pacific Islander mothers had incomes below the Federal poverty line, 37%. The percentage of single Asian and Hawaiin/Pacific Islander mothers with incomes below 51% of the Federal poverty line or more than 300% of the federal poverty line was similar, approximately 25%. Combined, single Asian and Hawaiian/Pacific Islander mothers were 3.1% of all single mothers (See Table 1).
Table 1. Percent of Single Asian and Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Mothers by Poverty Category
Colored Child
I’ll close with a fact not related to single mothers.
Today is the 69th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which declared segregated schools unequal and unconstitutional.
Did you know in 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (9-0) in Gong Lum v. Rice that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause had not been violated when Marth Lum, a Chinese girl, was deemed “colored?” The 1890 Mississippi State Constitution required that “Separate schools shall be maintained for children of the white and colored races;” therefore, Martha was not allowed to attend the all-white school.
