Census Poverty Data

Posted on September 29, 2011 by townsend

• Poverty affects 46 million Americans, By Marisol Bello, September 28, 2011, USA Today: “Billy Schlegel plunged from middle class into poverty in the time it took his daughter to play a soccer season. In January 2010, he was making $50,000 a year as a surveyor, meeting the mortgage payments on his three-bedroom home in the nation’s wealthiest county and paying for his children to play hockey and soccer. Then came February. Schlegel, 45, was laid off. During the next 18 months, the divorced father of three almost lost his house, had to stop paying child support and turned to the local food bank for basic necessities. ‘You’ve got to swallow your pride,’ Schlegel says. ‘Especially around here, people lose their status and they feel they don’t fit in.’ This is the face of poverty after the Great Recession. Millions of Americans such as Schlegel now find themselves among the suddenly poor…”
• Hispanic children in poverty exceed whites, study finds, By Sabrina Tavernise, September 28, 2011, New York Times: “Hispanic children living in poverty in the United States outnumber poor white children for the first time, a demographic shift that was hastened by the recession, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center. The number of Hispanic children in poverty jumped by 36 percent from 2007 to 2010, to a total of 6.1 million, compared with 5 million non-Hispanic white children who are poor, said the report, which analyzed recent data from the Census Bureau. The recession drove the rise, the report found. But demographics also contributed. The Hispanic population has grown by more than 40 percent over the past decade…”
• Hispanic kids the largest group of children living in poverty, By Carol Morello and Ted Mellnik, September 28, 2011, Washington Post: “Hispanics now make up the largest group of children living in poverty, the first time in U.S. history that poor white kids have been outnumbered by poor children of another race or ethnicity, according to a new study. In a report released Wednesday, the Pew Hispanic Center said that 6.1 million Hispanic children are poor, compared with 5 million non-Hispanic white children and 4.4 million black children. Pew said Hispanic poverty numbers have soared because of the impact of the recession on the growing number of Latinos…”