American poverty levels hit record high

US poverty rate swells for third year to 15.1% with the number of poor in 2010 the largest on record

guardian.co.uk, 14 September 2011

A record 46 million Americans were living in poverty in 2010, pushing the US poverty rate to its highest level since 1993, according to a government report on Tuesday on the grim effects of stubbornly high unemployment.

Underscoring the economic challenges that face President Barack Obama and Congress, the US census Bureau said the poverty rate rose for a third consecutive year to hit 15.1% in 2010. The number in poverty was the largest since the government first began publishing estimates in 1959.

The United States has the highest poverty rate among developed countries, according to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The poverty line for an American family of four with two children is an income $22,113 a year.
The data showed that children under 18 suffered the highest poverty rate, 22%, compared with adults and the elderly.

In a sign of decline for middle-income Americans, the figures showed continued decline in the number of Americans with employer-provided health insurance, while the ranks of the uninsured hovered just below the 50 million mark.

Underlying the census data was a rate of economic growth too meager to compensate for the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs from 2009 to 2010, as the recession officially ended but the jobless rate shot up from 9.3% to 9.6%.

"All of this deterioration in the labor market caused incomes to drop, poverty to rise and people to lose their health insurance," said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute think tank. "One of the immediately obvious issues this brings up is that there is no relief in sight."
T
he poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Hispanics but did not differ significantly for Asians. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 54% of the poor with whites at 9.9% and Asians at 12.1%.

The South fared worst among US regions, recording the highest poverty rate, a significant drop in median income and the largest number of residents without health insurance.
Broken down by state, Mississippi had the highest share of poor people, at 22.7%, according to calculations by the census Bureau. It was followed by Louisiana, the District of Columbia, Georgia, New Mexico and Arizona. On the other end of the scale, New Hampshire had the lowest share, at 6.6%.