Record Numbers of Americans Face Poverty
September 14, 2011
Census Bureau figures issued Tuesday show that 46.2 million Americans live below the poverty line, the highest number in the 52 years the agency has been publishing poverty numbers, writes The New York Times.
In 2010, some 2.6 million people slipped below the line—defined as an income of $22,314 for a family of four—bringing the nation’s poverty rate to 15.1 percent, the highest since 1993.
The findings were worse than economists had expected and delineate the toll of the financial crisis and the lingering downtown on middle- and lower-income Americans, The Times says.
