are there more black people on welfare?

     A politician was quoted last week as saying that more black people are on welfare than white people. Not so. More white people are on welfare. More white people are in prison, too. More white people are a lot of things. Consider the simple math--white people make about 87% ( 87 out of every 100 ) of the population, black people about 13% ( 13 out of every 100 ) . It is popular to use any statistic that has more than 13% of the black people--in prison, on welfare, under the poverty line--as proof that "more" black people are in prison, on welfare, or under the poverty line. It's just not true, and this isn't a fine point. Black people are on welfare out of proportion to their numbers--if  more than 13% of the total on welfare are black. If the statistics are really the same, we would expect 13% ( 13 out of every 100 )of the people on welfare to be black, and 87% of them to be white or "other". They aren't. Blacks do make up more than their numbers in the population in all of these categories--proof that we need more intervention where it counts--school. But "most" of the people on welfare, in prison, and in poverty are white.