I like where you're going with this, but, it does a shit job of establishing what "poor" means. The words in the article first mention the middle class vs rich, which makes it harder to derive real conclusions. I mean, I think you're right - doesn't look so bad for the people in the "poor" category - we just don't know what category that actually is.
It compares the top 20% with the bottom 20%. It doesn't make much sense because a son of a doctor that dropped out of highschool is obviously going to earn less than a poor college graduate.
I also don't understand why they are comparing highschool dropouts with college graduates. The article should instead compare college dropout vs college graduate.
The only conclusion you can really draw is that the rich highschool dropouts have a very big safety net which should be obvious.
