16 Million Americans In Severe Poverty

   Did you know that almost 16 million Americans now live in severe poverty?  Included in this category are individuals who earn less than $5,080 per year and a family of four who earns less than $9,903 per year the poverty  numbers have been going up since 2000. This data is based on 2005 statistics, the most recent year available.

    A  McClatchy Newspapers analysis  found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.

   For enquiring minds who want to know, there's more below.

                                    

McClatchy Newspaper

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind and the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries.

That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975.

About one in three severely poor people are under age 17, and nearly two out of three are female. Female-headed families with children account for a large share of the severely poor.

Nearly two out of three people (10.3 million) in severe poverty are white, but blacks (4.3 million) and Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) make up disproportionate shares. Blacks are nearly three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be in deep poverty, while Hispanics are roughly twice as likely.

Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, has a higher concentration of severely poor people - 10.8 percent in 2005 - than any of the 50 states, topping even hurricane-ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana, with 9.3 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively. Nearly six of 10 poor District residents are in extreme poverty.

   Maybe instead of just the No Child Left Behind program, Bush should consider adding a new program called No Family's Left Behind. Wait, that'll never happen because he has no family members that can profit from such a program, yet.

   Those stats are disgusting for a nation of our wealth and resources.

 

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