Despite claims to the contrary there's still a lot of economic mobility in the US - just as most homeless people are homeless for a only short period of time, m

Despite claims to the contrary there's still a lot of economic mobility in the US - just as most homeless people are homeless for a only short period of time, many people will dip in and out of poverty throughout their lifetimes and not that many are "chronically poor". During the lean times, the temporarily poor may be cashing out savings and 401k (and taking huge penalties), burning through home equity lines of credit, borrowing money from relatives, working under the table, etc. eg. Have a 60k a year job, 40k a year expenses and over a couple of years save up 20k in savings. Get laid off and your income goes down to 20k that year but you're only able to cut your expenses to 30k. You drain half your savings, spending 150% of your income that year. Next year, you're able to land a job paying 65k and you can start building up your savings again.