_70% of the poor own a car, 25% own two cars._

Those particular numbers don't tell the whole story.

There are many ways to "not have a car", including "the car has broken down and they don't have the $300 to get it fixed, just like what happened last month because the car is fundamentally unreliable after owning it for 15 years (or getting a 10-year-old used one because they had a windfall one month, five years ago) but they can't amass enough cash to get another one, because they're living hand-to-mouth."

Interesting data! Thanks for your input, For lack of a better opinion, I've been focusing on improving this stuff because of the relative ease.

I’m not going to look for an answer right now in that 642-page book, but I suspect that a significant fraction of poor people live in suburban or rural areas, where owning a car is an absolute necessity for holding a job, and owning two cars would be damn near a necessity in families where both parents work outside the house.

The poverty rates for metro and nonmetro areas are not dramatically different (12.5% vs 15.4%).

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB59/EIB59.pdf

Some quick math suggests about 30% of poor people live in nonmetro areas.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Population/

Since you seem unwilling to browse any sources I cite, I'm not going to bother looking up suburban poverty.

If you are interested in understanding poverty in the US, you should skim that 642 page report. It's a fantastic report and it answers many questions one might have about the material conditions of the poor (and many other categories of people).

I find that most people just don't understand what being poor and living and rural place is like. Besides the need of a car for a job it is absolutely necessary in order to have any social contact. When you live in a rural place your friends live at least 30 miles away. This is why rural "hicks" get pissed off when the gas price gets high. It takes way there ability to socialize.