- Unemployment tops 10 percent again _ and it’s tougher off the job than a generation ago, By Jeannine Aversa (AP), November 7, 2009, Chicago Tribune: “It hurts more to be unemployed now than the last time the jobless rate hit 10 percent. Americans have more than triple the debt they had in 1982, and less than half the savings. They spend 10 weeks longer off the job. And a bigger share of them have no health insurance, leaving them one medical emergency away from financial ruin. For these reasons, the unemployed are more vulnerable today to foreclosure and bankruptcy than they were a generation ago…”
- Debt levels leave low paid at risk of homelessness, By Nick Mathiason, November 11, 2009, The Guardian: “Britain’s 14.3 million low earners are in danger of being sucked into a whirlpool of poverty as official figures are expected to show today that the number of unemployed has passed through 2.5 million for the first time in 15 years. Research by the insurance tycoon Clive Cowdery’s thinktank, Resolution Foundation, shows low-income households – with an average of £15,800 at their disposal – are walking an increasingly precarious financial tightrope. It has found that 24% of low-wage households spend more than a quarter of their monthly income on debt – twice the number from three years ago. The study shows nearly a third of low-income households have high loan-to-value mortgages and are in negative equity, making them vulnerable to homelessness if they lose their job…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty