Driving through my hometown I see several houses in desperate need of a renovation; their windows blown out and covered in Saran wrap and the front doors falling off their hinges. Children running around the unkempt backyard with no shoes or coats. Then as I am about to turn the corner I see a satellite dish hanging off of the broken house’s siding, and this is “poverty” in America.

Undoubtedly there are families suffering greatly because of financial struggles. I would like to say-up front I am not here to ridicule people in that situation. The nine-to-five, hardworking, I-need-to-put-food-on-the-table-by-whatever-means-necessary families are certainly dedicated, yet I can’t help but notice these families have fallen into a minority.

So what exactly does poverty even mean anymore? The government has a system of measuring a family’s or individual’s annual income. If it is below a certain amount, that family, or individual, is considered to be living in poverty. A total of 45.3 million Americans currently fall under the poverty line, according to the latest census.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has developed a chart illustrating the annual income of families in poverty. For example, a single individual in poverty would make $11,770 or less annually, this works out to said person living on $32.24 daily. Seems like a very small amount of money to live on, right? Wrong.

The World Bank defines absolute poverty as any individual living on $1.25 a day or less. This figure even takes into account that every country pays different price levels for necessary living expenses, meaning Americans in poverty have 25.79 percent more daily income than other countries’ impoverished citizens.

Not only do American Citizens in poverty have a high income compared to other countries, they have amenities some middle-class families don’t have. Heritage.org has compiled information on amenities, food and housing that poor or impoverished Americans have.

I would like to first debunk the stereotypical thought that poor Americans are either homeless or live in small trailer homes. Poor families in America risk only a .009 percent chance of being homeless on any given night, and only 9.5 percent of poor and impoverished citizens live in a mobile home.

I grew up in a middle-class family, my mother is a special education teacher and my father is a self-employed artist. I never got the joy of having cable or satellite television, yet well over half of Americans in poverty have one or the other, which hardly seems poor to me. More than 69 percent of them also have more than one television, a luxury my family just upgraded to within the last few years.

Poor citizens are often pictured as not having enough food. However, Heritage.org discredited this misconception. Only 3.7 percent of Americans in poverty reported they “’often’ did not have enough food,” while a 2010 estimate from worldhunger.org, its most recent, states 239 million Africans are currently undernourished. This makes the 45.3 million impoverished Americans’ situations seem a little less dire. However, reputable organizations like feedingamerica.com help individuals and families in America, and even though America’s situation is not near as bad as Africa’s, those able to contribute should do so.

All of this being said, it can not be assumed that every situation is the same. Individuals living under the poverty line experience life in different ways, and those who need financial help may also own some of these amenities. This isn’t because they used their money to buy a DVD player instead of food. They could own a DVD player because of a myriad of other circumstances.

While some Americans are in a desperate situation of wondering where they will stay tonight or what they will eat, it is a far smaller number than most of us have been taught.

The majority of poor Americans are no longer living in ramshackle houses scraping together meals just to stay alive. They are enjoying many of the same amenities that middle-class citizens are. They are living sustainable lives filled with similar luxuries most Americans enjoy on a daily basis.

Poverty is terrible and is a difficult situation to live in, however, what most would call poverty in the U.S. isn’t necessarily poverty at all.