Tuesday, September 13, 2011

U.S. poverty rate increases to 15%; some of the more rural states have the highest rates

The percentage of Americans living in poverty is now the largest since 1959, when the Census Bureau first started tracking the poverty rate. There are now 46 million people living in poverty, bringing the rate up to 15.1.

Mississippi has the highest poverty rate at 22.7 percent, followed closely by Louisiana, the District of Columbia, Georgia, New Mexico and Arizona. Hope Yethat the recession, which left millions of Americans grappling with long-term unemployment, is to blame. The poverty rate rose faster from 2007 to 2010 than in any previous three-year period since the early 1980s.

Poverty rose among all racial and ethnic groups except Asians. Hispanics went from 25.3 to 26.6 percent, blacks from 25.8 to 27.4 percent and whites from 9.4 to 9.9 percent. The percentage of children in poverty rose from 20.7 to 22. (Read more)

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