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Comment by GhostVII | Hacker News Reader

> Most poor people in the US are women and their children.

There are 44 million people in poverty in the US. There are 10 million single mothers in the US, with 17 million children. Since the majority of single mothers are not in poverty, your statement is false.

https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother-statistics/

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It is, at worst, inadequately pedantic. Most poor adults in the US are female. Women and children make up the majority.

My phrasing is fine if someone is engaging in good faith and trying to actually understand my points rather than looking for some trivial means to justify dismissing them.

I assumed you were talking about single mothers and their children. I think that is a fair assumption since it is not very surprising that the majority of people in poverty are women and children - they do make up the majority of the US population, after all. You could similarly say that most poor people in the US are men and their children.

You could say that, but women usually get custody. So it isn't really an accurate framing of social reality.

You really seem to be reaching here. So I will likely not reply further.

You've supported your thesis (that society treats women unfairly) with "we let men die younger" and "we let women disproportionately win custody battles". I think your posts have been confusing--I don't think we need to assume bad faith.

EDIT: Others have independently expressed similar confusion as well.

EDIT2: I'm being throttled, but in response to Doreen:

Here's where you say women live longer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16055356). I don't see how that can mean anything other than "men die younger". Again, no need to resort to "bad faith" when "miscommunication" suffices. Here's the full text for convenience/posterity:

> Most poor people in the US are women and their children. Most of those women were solidly middle class until one of three things happened: 1) She got unexpectedly pregnant. 2) She got divorced. 3) Her spouse died. Due to the fact that women live longer and men are, on average, about 4 years older than their wives, 90 percent if the time, when someone is burying their spouse it is a woman burying her husband. (for hetero couples, a stat that will change with same sex marriage)

"we let men die younger"

Nowhere did I say that. That framing sounds incredibly bad faith.

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