Poverty Rate

Showing the scars of the deep recession last year, the nation's poverty level jumped to an 11-year high, household incomes sank and the number of people without health insurance rose slightly to 46.3 million, the government reported today. The Census Bureau said that median household incomes fell 3.6% from 2007 to $50,303 last year. That was the biggest decline since 1991 and represented millions of job cuts by employers in 2008. The ranks of people without medical coverage, which increased from 45.7 million in 2007, were expected to have risen more sharply last year.

The vast expansion of Medicaid in the 2010 healthcare reform law put Washington on a collision course with cash-strapped state governments, which have been scrambling to reduce the cost of the joint federal-state insurance program for the poor and disabled. That conflict reaches the Supreme Court on Wednesday, when lawyers for 24 states will seek to bar Congress from adding millions of Americans to the program's rolls. Meanwhile, the House is considering a Republican budget proposal that would cap Medicaid spending and hand over control to the states.

Re "U.S. Poverty Rate Rose Again in 2004," Sept. 1 This is the fourth year in a row that the poverty rate has risen. Is this what "Christian leadership" does for a country? I consider myself a Christian; one who was taught to look after the poor and to give joyfully. It makes me sad that this government uses Jesus to further political aspirations while not following through on his instructions. Don't take my word for it as to how Christians are to treat the poor. Go to the back of the Bible and find the dictionary or concordance and look up "poor."

Every time Bishop Robert Mallory walks into Town Hall to pay his overdue water bill and get his water turned back on, Town Clerk Dorenda Gatling asks, "House or church?" She lives just up the street from Mallory's house and across the street from his church. But that doesn't keep Gatling from cutting off town water to either one when he can't afford to pay the bills. "Ask me how that feels - a woman of faith cutting off water to the church," Gatling says, putting her head in her hands inside the cramped town clerk's office at the one-story Roper Town Hall.

Democratic presidential contender Sen. Joe Lieberman proposed an antipoverty plan Sunday at the historic home of a leader of South Carolina's civil rights movement. The plan calls for expanding special individual savings accounts that match investments dollar for dollar, provided the money is used to buy a home, invest in a small business or pay for education.

The nation's real family income rose 1.3% overall last year--5% for black families--but the poverty rate remained only a breath away from the 1984 figure, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. In 1985, 33.1 million people, or 14%, were impoverished, the bureau said--not statistically different from the 33.7 million in poverty a year earlier, when the rate was 14.4%. "The poor aren't going anywhere," said Isabel Sawhill, an economist at the Urban Institute in Washington.

The nation's poverty rate, closely tracking the economy, dropped to 14% last year, meaning that 33.1 million Americans are officially considered poor, the Census Bureau said today. A Census Bureau report showed that the poverty rate was down 0.4 percentage points from 1984, but officials said the change was not significant. Most of the improvement in the poverty rate came among blacks, where the figure dropped from 33.8% in 1984 to 31.3% in 1985. A total of 8.

The number of Americans living in poverty fell in 1994 for the first time in five years, the Commerce Department said Thursday in a report that suggested the national recovery is belatedly reaching those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder. The poverty rate also declined, from 15.1% in 1993 to 14.5% in 1994, according to the statistical snapshot, which provided the Clinton Administration with some encouraging news about the status of have-nots during its economic stewardship.

The recession and longer-term economic troubles have pushed the nation's poverty rate to levels not seen in more than a decade, wiping out gains in the long-running War on Poverty and adding more financial strain to the lives of millions of Americans. New Census Bureau data, released Thursday, also showed that the face of the poor has changed. Those falling below the poverty line today are more likely to be full-time workers who cannot earn enough to meet their needs or middle-class workers driven into the ranks of the poor by lost jobs or shrinking incomes.

Every time Bishop Robert Mallory walks into Town Hall to pay his overdue water bill and get his water turned back on, Town Clerk Dorenda Gatling asks, "House or church?" She lives just up the street from Mallory's house and across the street from his church. But that doesn't keep Gatling from cutting off town water to either one when he can't afford to pay the bills. "Ask me how that feels - a woman of faith cutting off water to the church," Gatling says, putting her head in her hands inside the cramped town clerk's office at the one-story Roper Town Hall.

More than 49 million Americans live in poverty, an increase from previous counts that reflects heavy medical expenses for older people and high housing costs in Western states, especially California, according to new estimates announced Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The estimates, produced by a first-ever experimental recalibration of the federal model of hardship, adds 2.5 million people to the 46.6 million included in the official poverty count for 2010 released in September.

Should you be penalized under the law if you previously hadn't been able to afford a car, chose not to own a car or if you lived for a time in a city where you didn't need one? A Los Angeles insurance billionaire has made an $8-million bet that says you should, contributing a chunk of his fortune to an initiative he hopes to qualify for the June 2012 ballot. George Joseph, chairman of insurer Mercury General Corp. and tied as the 385th richest man in America, claims that he simply wants to be able to charge people a little less for having insurance continuously, but it's illegal to do so. What he doesn't say is that those who didn't have insurance because they had not been driving or are in the growing ranks of the long-term unemployed would have to pay more — likely much more — when they buy or restart auto insurance.

In a grim portrait of a nation in economic turmoil, the government reported that the number of people living in poverty last year surged to 46.2 million — the most in at least half a century — as 1 million more Americans went without health insurance and household incomes fell sharply. The poverty rate for all Americans rose in 2010 for the third consecutive year, matching the 15.1% figure in 1993 and pushing many more young adults to double up or return to their parents' home to avoid joining the ranks of the poor.

Poverty levels are up in the U.S., the Census Bureau reports, with the percentage of Americans living in poverty at its highest point since 1993. That will likely translate into increasing health issues for those people, since being poor seems inexorably linked to poor health. A number of studies have linked poverty to higher levels of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other diseases and conditions. While the association may seem obvious, the reasons can be complex: having little access to healthcare, less education about disease treatment and prevention, a scarce supply of healthful foods, fewer opportunities to exercise and embarrassment about one's condition.

The number of Californians living in poverty grew for the fourth straight year in 2010, more evidence that continued high unemployment and a struggling economy are weighing on the state's families. About 6 million Californians had incomes below the federal poverty line of $22,113 for a family of four in 2010, census data released Tuesday show. That's 16.3% of the population, up from 15.3% in 2009. Nearly 1 in 5 residents lacked health insurance last year, one of the highest rates in the nation.

Donny Ashley misses the days when he was just barely poor. Sure, he commuted more than three hours each day to work as an electrical apprentice, but the paycheck ? about $575 a week ? put his family of four over the federal poverty threshold. But then the economy turned, and he lost his job. His wife managed to get work as a nurse but lost that job about a month ago. Now, having burned through their savings, the Watts family has gone from barely poor to officially poor. "It's not a good feeling to be, not necessarily above the poverty line, but somewhat, almost having your head above water where you can breathe.

In the Times Board of Economists column on May 8, ("Ranks of the Poor Keep Growing") A. Gary Shilling claimed: "The poverty rate has been increasing since 1973." Shilling distorted the facts. The poverty rate did spike upward in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but then it started to fall. By 1986, it stood at 13.6%, down from a high of 15.2% in 1983. Thanks to plunging unemployment, the 1987 poverty rate should prove even lower. (The Census Bureau will publish the figure this summer.

The Census Bureau, which has expanded its definition of poverty, has calculated that 15.7% of Americans, many of them elderly, are poor and struggling because of rising medical costs and other expenses. In 2009, the bureau reported, there were 47.8 million people living in poverty. The figure, released Wednesday, comes with the debut of a different way of measuring the nation's poor. The method was adopted by the bureau this year to serve as a supplement to the method used for decades.

Poverty is increasing in the Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario areas at one of the nation's highest rates, a study released Thursday concluded. The poverty rate in those sections of the Inland Empire surged about 31% from 2007 to 2009, according to research from the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution. Companion research, also just released by Brookings, suggests that the social safety net in such fast-growing suburban areas is dangerously thin, compounding economic hardships.