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

Extreme Poverty in the US

More than 1.4 million families live on $2 a day per person, By Marisol Bello, February 23, 2012, USA Today: “The number of families living on $2 or less per person per day for at least a month in the USA has more than doubled in 15 years to 1.46 million. That’s up from 636,000 households in 1996, says a new study released by researchers at the University of Michigan and Harvard University. Government benefits blunt the impact of such extreme poverty, but not completely, says one of the researchers, Luke Shaefer, a professor of social work at Michigan…”