- Poor are still getting poorer, but downturn’s punch varies, Census data show, By Jason DeParle and Sabrina Tavernise, September 15, 2011, New York Times: “The discouraging numbers spilling from the Census Bureau’s poverty report this week were a disquieting reminder that a weak economy continues to spread broad and deep pain. And so it does. But not evenly. The Midwest is battered, but the Northeast escaped with a lighter knock. The incomes of young adults have plunged – but those of older Americans have actually risen. On the whole, immigrants have weathered the storm a bit better than people born here. In rural areas, poverty remained unchanged last year, while in suburbs it reached the highest level since 1967, when the Census Bureau first tracked it. Yet one old problem has not changed: the poor have rapidly gotten poorer. The report, an annual gauge of prosperity and pain, is sure to be cited in coming months as lawmakers make difficult decisions about how to balance the competing goals of cutting deficits and preserving safety nets…”
- Health insurance, poverty: Numbers of poor, uninsured increase, census figures show, By Jeff Kunerth and Kate Santich, September 13, 2011, Orlando Sentinel: “More than 46.2 million Americans live in poverty – the highest number in the 52 years for which such estimates have been published, according to census figures released Tuesday. From 2009 to 2010, the nation’s poor increased by 2.6 million, and the number of those without health insurance grew by nearly 1 million people. In Florida, 3.8 million people – more than one in five – were without health insurance last year. Nationwide, the number of uninsured was closer to one in six. Census officials attributed the increase in poverty to the high numbers of unemployed Americans…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty