Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Esperanza Rodriguez, a proud grandmother, has pushed through poverty her entire life. She now lives on about $8,000 a year.

The word "poor" evokes the image of a homeless man in tatters, coaxing change from motorists with a loyal dog at his side, clutching a flagrantly misspelled sign. Or perhaps, the image is that of a family of recent immigrants living in a mobile home with no running water in a dusty, desolate colonia.

But those are not the faces of the poor in El Paso, where stereotypes are shattered and redefined.

Most of the poor live in the city. They are U.S. citizens. They are married couples. They work, although few bring home two full-time wages that total at least $20,650, the amount a family of four must earn to avoid living below the federal poverty line.

Most of the El Paso families living in poverty also have children. They are young. They are not on Social Security or on cash public assistance. Close to half own their homes.

They do not live much differently than those above the poverty line.

Esperanza Rodriguez breaks and maintains some of the local stereotypes. At 53, she lives alone in a spotlessly clean unit of the Kennedy Brothers apartment complex in the Lower Valley.

For years she worked as many as three jobs at a time; now she lives off about $8,000 paid to her each year in disability, but says she has what she needs. Her income level is irrelevant.

"I always had the mentality that if an enemy closed one door, God would open a better one," she said.

The poor are 29.2 percent of El Paso County's population, according to the 2005 American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau. The national poverty rate is 12.6 percent. This county tied with the Bronx as the third-poorest large county in the nation in 2005.

That means an estimated 200,000 El Pasoans live in poverty. According to federal poverty guidelines, a poor family of four has $14.14 a day to spend per family member; single people living on the poverty line have $27.97 to spend a day.

An additional 100,000 El Pasoans are also considered poor, by federal standards, because they make less than 150 percent of the poverty-level income. For a family of four, that income level is $30,975 a year.

Maj. Ron Wildman, El Paso County coordinator for the Salvation Army, gives out food baskets to poor families who can't quite make it to the end of the month.

"A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck, making significant choices to survive - living with relatives, not enrolling their children in extracurricular activities, opting not to take some of their medicine, not to manage their high blood pressure or their diabetes," he said. "That's what people don't understand: These families have enough to live on, but not enough to live."

Many experts interviewed about the reasons for El Paso's enduring poverty rates cited low education levels and low-paying jobs. These factors and others come together to paint a picture of the poor, but perhaps not in the way that the stereotypes dictate.

Starting off poor

A widespread vision of poverty is that of the elderly living their sunset years alone on a fixed income. But the most likely victims of poverty are just beginning life.

More than 40 percent of the poor in El Paso County are children younger than 17, compared with 7 percent of the poor who are older than 65. Just less than 40 percent of poor children are younger than 5, according to the 2005 American Community Survey.

"At least the elderly are covered by Social Security and Medicare. The younger families don't have that same safety net," said Cheryl Howard, a professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Families, whether married couples with children or single parents, make up most of the poor in El Paso - about 80 percent.

More poor families are headed by married couples than by single parents. But families headed by single women are more than twice as likely to be poor in El Paso than married-couple families - 44.5 percent of single women with children live in poverty, compared with about 20 percent of married couples with children, according to the U.S. Census.

In general, children are expensive, and people with children are three times as likely to be poor as people without children.

Monica Rojas, a single mother in San Elizario, said that she regretted dropping out of high school when she first became pregnant and that she hoped to be able to finish her studies someday. But for now, all her money and efforts go to her four young children.

"They are my priority. Every mom will tell you that," she said. "The money goes to pay my bills, and with whatever's left, I'll buy things for my kids. It is hard."

Statistics from the U.S. Census indicate that people who make it out of poverty are likely to have an education.

Only 6 percent of El Pasoans with a bachelor's degree were poor in 2005, compared with 22 percent of those with only a high-school diploma and 40 percent of high-school dropouts.

The working poor

Most El Pasoans living in poverty work, although very few enjoy two full-time incomes. According to the 2005 American Community Survey, 77 percent of El Paso County's poor families included at least one worker, but only 18 percent had two or more workers.

Economists think those numbers may not reflect the true picture of employment in El Paso because so many of the poor, especially in immigrant communities, hold informal, unreported jobs.

The problem, of course, is low-paying jobs.

The median income in El Paso in 2005 was $30,968 per household, versus $46,242 for the rest of the United States, according to the American Community Survey. The per-capita income in El Paso, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, was $13,421, compared with $21,587 for the United States.

"I still think there's a stigma about the border," said Dennis Soden, executive director of the Institute for Policy and Economic Development at UTEP. "It's difficult to attract people, to have them make large investments here. We don't get design centers; we get call centers. It'd be nice to get 400 jobs in an engineering center."

Immigration status can hinder someone's ability to make a living, but it is hardly the main contributor to poverty.

In fact, U.S. Census statistics show that 65 percent of the poor in El Paso County in 2005 were born in the United States.

Not on the dole

The stereotype that the poor abuse social services is also hard to reconcile with the statistical reality.

The U.S. Census' 2005 American Community Survey shows that 40 percent of El Pasoans below the poverty level did not receive food stamps.

The 1997 welfare reform shifted the U.S. away from welfare payments and toward support payments to the working poor. To replace welfare, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF, was created.

"The idea was to move people to work," said Ted Hughes, press officer for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

But nationwide, the working poor are not taking full advantage of TANF or the other programs for which they qualify.

In El Paso County, while 25.3 percent of the population were below the poverty line in 2000, only 3.3 percent received TANF, with an average annual payment of $691. The same year, only 16 percent were receiving food stamps, with the average annual payment at $867, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. The agency did not have more-recent figures available.

Experts said that immigration statuses may be the problem. Even legal residents are not eligible for food stamps for several years after entering the United States.

El Paso County Commissioner Veronica Escobar said she thinks some government requirements, such as those that make families re-enroll in the Children's Health Insurance Program every six months, make it too hard for the poor to access services.

She said state and federal agencies should educate the poor about programs that could keep them from living on the brink of disaster.

"The jobs that these families have access to are not high-paying jobs with insurance," she said. "A single medical emergency can wipe out someone's finances and send them back many months."

It could actually send them to a homeless shelter.

The Salvation Army's Emergency Shelter houses about 20 families.

"We have a lot of new homeless families," said Camerina Hunter, the shelter's social services director. "They've had an emergency and they've used up all their savings. They end up here."

Measuring poverty