The author did not apprise the reader of the measure of poverty, so it is assumed that the way poverty is measured is the same over the decades. This may not be true so in this instance the comparison can be misleading.
The use of the median as a measure of income level is a consistent use of a statistical measure. The median is a more robust measure of national income than the mean since it is not as susceptible to the influence of outliers in the data (Gravetter & Wallnau, 2008). The use of the median provides a more precise measure of the middle class challenge. The conclusion that the middle class is stagnating is a legitimate conclusion based on the lack of income growth within that group. In this instance, the statistics were used appropriately.
The use of data to show increases while legitimate can provide an inaccurate picture of the state of a problem. The author used counts to show that the numbers of persons without health care increased from 46 million in 2008, to 51 million in 2009....
The author in this instance is abusing the statistical data, and the absence of comparative percentages is informative.
The statistical measures employed in this article were arranged to support the argument of the author. The author clearly demonstrated that poverty is on the increase across all ethnicities within the society. The challenge however, is that the use of some of the measures may mislead the reader and obfuscate the true picture regarding poverty in America.
References
Eckholm, E. (2010). Recession raises poverty rate to a 15-year high. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/us/17poverty.html?hp
Gravetter, F.J., & Wallnau, L.B. (2008). Statistics for the behavioral sciences 8th ed. California:
Wadsworth Publishing.
