University of Maryland
Sociology 498: Homelessness 

Comparing Rossi's Chicago homeless with the Chicago non-homeless

Rossi found that the average monthly income among the Chicago homeless was $168. In inflation adjusted dollars in the year 2000, that would be about $253. By comparing homeless incomes to non-homeless incomes, we can see the association between poverty and homelessness. The 1990 U.S. Census gives us a large enough sample of Chicago residents for a comparison. The data are four years after Rossi's survey, but that is the best we can do.

graph of mean income for Chicago samples

The Census data tell us, not surprisingly, that the Chicago homeless are much poorer than the average for all of Chicago. The homeless incomes are much lower than even the incomes of people who the Census Bureau classifies as poor (about 20% of all Chicago residents in 1990). However, if we restrict our focus to the extremely poor (people in families whose income is less than half of the official poverty line -- about 10% of the Chicago population), the homeless are doing better than this extremely impoverished group. In fact, the homeless have almost twice the income of the extremely poor. Nevertheless, almost all the extremely poor live in conventional dwellings. There must be additional explanations beyond mere poverty why the homeless are not adequately housed.
 

Rossi also compares homeless incomes to the incomes of SRO residents. This is a particularly relevant comparison, since an SRO residence is just one step above homelessness -- both in terms of comfort and cost. Rossi found that the SRO resident income was more than three times homeless incomes.

Conclusion:

There is a clear association between poverty and homelessness. The incomes of the homeless resemble those of the extremely poor. They are well below the incomes of even the average poor person and below the incomes of those living in substandard, but conventional, dwellings. The data are consistent with Rossi's hypothesis that poverty is a cause of homelessness.
 
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Last updated February 13, 2006
comments to: Reeve Vanneman. reeve@cwmills.umd.edu