In 1960-61, according to the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, the bottom one-fourth of American homes spent about 12 per cent more than their pre-tax reported incomes each year.
By 2011, according to that same survey, those in the lowest quintile were spending nearly 125 per cent more than their reported pre-tax incomes and nearly 120 per cent more than their reported post-tax, post-transfer incomes.
By 2011, average per capita housing space for people in poverty was higher than the U.S. average for 1980, and crowding (more than one person per room) was less common for the 2011 poor than for the non-poor in 1970.
More than three-quarters of the 2011 poor had access to one or more motor vehicles, whereas nearly three-fifths were without an auto in 1972-73.
Refrigerators, dishwashers, washers and dryers, and many other appliances were more common in officially impoverished homes in 2011 than in the typical American home of 1980 or earlier.
Microwaves were virtually universal in poor homes in 2011, and DVD players, personal computers, and home Internet access are now typical in their amenities of the poor that not even the richest U.S. households could avail themselves of at the start of the War on Poverty in 1964.
The charts the third of the charts below shows below show that below American households that are poor and that are not poor do not differ greatly in the consumer amenities that they.
Americans counted as poor today are manifestly living longer, are healthier, better nourished (or over-nourished), and more schooled than their predecessors half a century ago.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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