More Americans Living In Poverty

The number of Americans living in poverty grew to 37.3 million (12.5 percent) in 2007, up from 36.5 million in 2006, and despite improvements over the past three years, real median American household income is still below that of 2000.

The number of Americans without health insurance totals 45.7 million — even though the percentage of Americans without health insurance did fall from 15.8% in 2006 to 15.3% in 2007. That improvement is only due to the government health care programs of Medicare and Medicaid, which Democrats created and have always championed and which Republicans continue to try to slash. Indeed, employer-provided health insurance and other private health insurance continued to erode in 2007.

Today’s economic news from the Census covers 2006-2007 and does not take into account the consequences of the economic downturn that began late last year. Since January, the number of American jobs has dropped by 463,000 and the unemployment rate has climbed to 5.7 percent — the highest level in more than four years. Real earnings have decreased by 3.1 percent over the past 12 months.    Source

Technorati Tags: economy,poverty,George Bush,jobs