Poverty Rates Highest Since 1997 : NPR: Almost 40 million people in the U.S. lived in poverty last year — the first full year of the recession — putting the nation's poverty rate at its highest level in 11 years, according to new figures released Thursday by the Census Bureau.
The fact that poverty is on the rise is no surprise. Since the start of the recession back in December 2007, unemployment has been going up and incomes have been going down. The median income dropped 3.6 percent last year, and the poverty rate rose to 13.2 percent. That pushed an additional 2.5 million people below the poverty line. Many were children.
David Johnson, a senior statistician with the Census Bureau, says the increase is clearly linked to jobs.
'Children in nonworking families, children in female-headed households, children in families that receive food stamps, their poverty rate didn't change much,' Johnson says. 'Whereas children in earner households, the poverty was affected a lot. So you see a lot of it tied to the earnings change in 2007, 2008.'
That makes a lot of people nervous. If things were so bad last year, what about now?
