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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

Month: December 2010

Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Coverage

Medicaid bonuses to reward states for insuring more children, By Kevin Sack, December 27, 2010, Washington Post: “The Obama administration plans to announce Monday that it will make $206 million in bonus Medicaid payments to 15 states – with more than a fourth of the total going to Alabama – for signing up children who are eligible for public health insurance but had previously failed to enroll. The payments, which were established when Congress and President Obama reauthorized the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 2009, are aimed at one of the most persistent frustrations in government health care: the inability to enroll an estimated 4.7 million children who would be eligible for subsidized coverage if their families could be found and alerted. Two of every three uninsured children are thought to meet the income criteria for government insurance programs…”

Rural Poverty in the US

Poverty highest in rural America, rising in recession, By Bill Bishop, December 27, 2010, Daily Yonder: “Nearly one in six people living in rural America fell below the poverty line in 2009, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. And poverty rates in rural counties continue to be higher than in rural and urban communities. In 2009, the poverty rate in rural America was 17.26%, according to the Yonder’s analysis of Census Bureau data. The rate in exurban counties was 13.3%; and in urban counties, the rate was 13.9%. The national poverty rate in 2009 was 14.4%. Rural, urban and exurban poverty rates were higher in 2009 than before the recession began in late 2007. The 2009 rates for urban, rural and exurban counties were all about one percentage point higher than the rates in 2006. There were 8.3 million people living below the poverty line in rural counties in 2009, half a million more than in 2006. Nationally 42.4 million people fell below the poverty line in 2009, 4 million more than before the recession began…”

Report: The Recession and Working Poor Families

Recession forces rise in low-wage families, report says, By Michael A. Fletcher, December 21, 2010, Washington Post: “The Great Recession, responsible for boosting unemployment to its highest levels in a generation, has sharply increased the percentage of working people who earn wages so paltry that they are struggling to survive, according to a new report. The share of working families earning less than double the official poverty threshold – $43,512 for a family of four – increased from 28 to 30 percent between 2007 and 2009, according to a report released Tuesday by the Working Families Project, a nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of the working poor. Overall, the report said, the number of people living in low-income working families increased by 1.7 million to 45 million between 2008 and 2009. In November, the jobless rate rose to 9.8 percent, and has hovered near 10 percent for more than a year…”