INCOME & POVERTY

Income and Poverty

2014 NYT Tomi Um

The Great Wage Slowdown of the 21st Century

80 Percent Of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment: Survey
Huffington Post 7-2013

Food Stamps Hit Record High
Nearly one in five Americans did not have enough money to pay for food some time in the past year, according to Gallup.

Military Families Forced to Subsidize Income With Food Banks
NBC Nightly News 8-17-14

Middle-class Americans see their incomes drop
(CBS News) MIDDLETOWN, Ohio
Both Mitt Romney and President Obama are courting middle-class voters -- many of whom fear the dream of a better life for their children is slipping away.

Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the U. S. Census
Bordering on Poverty

The Poor, the Near Poor and Our Country

Family Net Worth Drops to Level of Early ’90s, Fed Says

Half Of American Households Hold 1 Percent Of Wealth
Huffington Post: July 2012

WASHINGTON NYT — The recent economic crisis left the median American family in 2010 with no more wealth than in the early 1990s, erasing almost two decades of accumulated prosperity

A fuller measure of poverty by the Census Bureau shows more people living "near poverty" (not poor, but with incomes below 150% of the poverty line) than the old measure does. The new measure adjusts for cost of living and includes government benefits and income lost to taxes, health care and work expenses.

Americans are relying on government benefits more than ever before:

Government benefits

INTERACTIVE MAP 2009

Between 2007 and 2010, the median net worth of the American family dropped 39 percent, numbers that go a long way to explain why the economic recovery has been modest and remains fragile.
NBC’s Anne Thompson reports.

Family net worth drops nearly 40 percent

(CBS News) ATHENS COUNTY, Ohio

Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It
40,000,000 in Poverty in America - Our Nation's Tragedy

The White Underclass

“As a practical matter, we can’t solve educational problems, health care costs, government spending or economic competitiveness so long as a chunk of our population is locked in an underclass. Historically, “underclass” has often been considered to be a euphemism for race, but increasingly it includes elements of the white working class as well.” Nicholas Kristof NYT Op-Ed Columnist
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/opinion/kristof-the-decline-of-white-workers.html?src=me

Friends and Neighbors: How do you choose between paying your bills and feeding your kids?

dateline: poverty

America is getting poorer. The U.S. government has just released a bunch of new statistics about poverty in America, and once again this year the news is not good. According to a special report from the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.2 million Americans are now living in poverty.

america is getting poorer

Robert Shiller talks to Charlie Rose about inequality