Number of People in Poverty Rises
Number of People in Poverty Rises to Record Level in 2009The number of people in poverty rose to the highest level on record in 2009, the Census Bureau reported Thursday, pegging the U.S. poverty rate at 14.3 percent.
Published September 16, 2010
| FoxNews.com
The national rate is the highest since 1994 and among the working-age poor the highest level since the 1960s. The Census Bureau says that about 43.6 million people, or 1 in 7, were in poverty last year. That's up from 39.8 million, or 13.2 percent, in 2008, and the largest number since poverty estimates were first recorded in 1959 -- the U.S. population has also grown by more than 130 million in that time.
The statistics released Thursday cover President Obama's first year in office, when unemployment topped 10 percent in the months after the financial meltdown. The report comes at a sensitive time with the midterm congressional elections just weeks away and lawmakers trying to show their efforts have helped drag the economy out of a rut.
While the poverty rate was the highest since 1994, it was lower than estimates of many demographers who were bracing for a record gain based on last year's skyrocketing unemployment. Many had predicted a range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent. Analysts credited increases in government pension plans and extensions in unemployment benefits.
"Given all the unemployment we saw, it's the government safety net that's keeping people above the poverty line," said Douglas Besharov, a University of Maryland public policy professor and former scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
The number of people lacking health insurance also rose from 46.3 million to 50.7 million, due mostly to the loss of employer-provided health insurance during the recession. Congress passed a health overhaul earlier this year to extend coverage to more people.
The median -- or midpoint -- household income
was $49,777, similar to the 2008 figure.
Other census findings:
--Among the working-age population, ages 18 to 65, poverty rose from 11.7 percent to 12.9 percent. That puts it at the highest since the 1960s, when the government launched a war on poverty that expanded the federal role in social welfare programs from education to health care.
--Poverty rose among all race and ethnic groups, but stood at higher levels for blacks and Hispanics. The number of Hispanics in poverty increased from 23.2 percent to 25.3 percent; for blacks it increased from 24.7 percent to 25.8 percent. The number of whites in poverty rose from 8.6 percent to 9.4 percent.
--Child poverty rose from 19 percent to 20.7 percent.
In 2009, the poverty level stood at $21,954 for a family of four, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership.
As a result, the official poverty rate takes into account the effects of some stimulus programs in 2009, such as unemployment benefits as well as jobs that were created or saved by government spending. But it does not factor in noncash government aid such as tax credits and food stamps, which have surged to record levels in recent months. Experts say such noncash aid tends to have a larger effect on lowering child poverty.
Beginning next year, the government plans to publish new, supplemental poverty figures that are expected to show even higher numbers of people in poverty than previously known. The figures will incorporate rising costs of medical care, transportation and child care, a change analysts believe will add to the ranks of both seniors and working-age people in poverty.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Comments (9)
Efforts to tame America's ballooning budget deficit could soon confront a daunting reality: Nearly half of all Americans live in a household in which someone receives government benefits, more than at any time in history.
At the same time, the fraction of American households not paying federal income taxes has also grown—to an estimated 45% in 2010, from 39% five years ago, according to the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research organization.
A little more than half don't earn enough to be taxed; the rest take so many credits and deductions they don't owe anything. Most still get hit with Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes, but 13% of all U.S. households pay neither federal income nor payroll taxes.
"We have a very large share of the American population that is getting checks from the government," says Keith Hennessey, an economic adviser to President George W. Bush and now a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, "and an increasingly smaller portion of the population that's paying for it."
The dimensions of the budget hole were underscored Monday, when the Treasury reported that the government ran a $1.26 trillion deficit for the first 11 months of the fiscal year, on pace to be the second-biggest on record.
who is poor in underdeveloped countries is aloowing u to be rich (with respect to himself) believe it or not ....
So, I'd say .... either help 'em out or else quit the arguement...
been too honest? perhaps
ma'am, u're too pretty to be 48 ... oughta be my age ...
Ironically the president will be raising the rate on the category that is home to seventy-five percent of all small businesses in America -- they will be socked by the largest increase.
I call it ironic because it is the small business community in America that hires 2 out of every 3 new workers in America.
Eventually it all adds up.
And then there was Monday's announcement. In Wisconsin, the President Obama proposed a $50 billion investment in long-term infrastructure projects that he claimed will stimulate the flailing economy, create jobs and refill the exhausted federal highway trust fund. But it's very unclear whether or not this proposal will ever be passed by Congress before the November midterms.
The president has not been pushed on this issue by the press. The president's team pretends that these realities do not exist. The president himself is willing to perpetuate the false notion that the stimulus package set up a "recovery summer" that in truth ended up in greater pain than it began with.
None of this takes into account the additional costs that will be incurred by taxpayers when the full implementation of President Obama's control of one-sixth of the economy through the manipulation of how we receive health care benefits kicks in. And not that it has a great likelihood of passing this year, but if by some miracle it did, the Obama tax penalties that would be incurred by every citizen in the nation under the proposed "cap and trade" legislation would add even greater misery to the growing pile.
All of these pending tax increases will be put into effect against well more than 95% of American tax-payers. Speaking of which that certainly contradicts his most famous campaign line.
In 1929, Yale economist Irving Fisher made note of a number of trends led to the worst economic depression in our nation's history.
Guess how many of these same trends fit into today's scenario:
• Debt liquidation and distress selling
• Contraction of the money supply as bank loans are paid off
• A fall in the level of asset prices
• A still greater fall in the net worths of business, precipitating bankruptcies
• A fall in profits
• A reduction in output, in trade and in employment.
• Pessimism and loss of confidence
• Hoarding of money
• A fall in nominal interest rates and a rise in deflation adjusted interest rates.
President Obama is ignoring and misrepresenting the rate of growth (or lack thereof) in the job numbers, and his economic team has laid the groundwork for the harshest attack on small businesses and every family in America that pays taxes effective January 1, 2011.
By every indicator this observer can see, we are poised for tragedy... and I didn't even get an Ivy League education!
Kevin McCullough is the nationally syndicated host of "'Baldwin/McCullough Radio"now heard on 212 stations and columnist based in New York. He blogs at The Kind Of MAN Every Man SHOULD Be is in stores now. And host of "The Kevin McCullough Show"weekdays 7 a.m. - 9 a.m. ET on Sirius 161.
If the U.S. is poor or becomes poor, all nations will be poorer!
Is this not true?
You either are a Bush obsessed American and know nothing else whats going on worldwide,or,....a nun,or,...
....,or both !
Cheer up girl,enjoy everyday as it comes,do what you have to do,and let the politicians do what they can (if anything) do best