While it’s no surprise that nearly 50 million Americans live below the poverty line, new statistics from the US Census show that almost 100 million others are counted as low-income citizens, making half of the population of America officially poor.
The latest figures out of the US Census Bureau show that in addition to the 49.1 million Americans who fall below the official poverty line, those that rake in enough to be between that level and the income equitable to double it fall into a new “low-income” category, which counts an additional 97.3 million people. Altogether, that clump of nearly 150 million Americans living in dire economic standing accounts for around 48 percent of the US population...[Full Article]
More than 16 million children are now living in poverty and, for many of them, a proper home is elusive. Some cash-strapped families stay with relatives; others move into motels or homeless shelters. But, as Scott Pelley reports, sometimes those options run out, leaving an even more desperate choice: living in their cars. 60 Minutes returns to Florida, home to one third of America's homeless families, to find out what life is like for the epidemic's youngest survivors.
To learn more about the organization "Families In Transition" - the social services organization featured in this piece - click here. The organization works with homeless students in the Seminole County schools.
The following is a script of "Hard Times Generation" which aired on Nov. 27, 2011. Scott Pelley is correspondent, Bob Anderson and Nicole Young, producers.
Never has unemployment been so high for so long. And as a result, more than 16 million kids are living in poverty - the most since 1962. It's worst where the construction industry collapsed. And one of those places is central Florida.
We went there eight months ago to meet families who'd become homeless for the first time in their lives. So many were living day-to-day that school buses changed their routes to pick up all the kids living in cheap motels. We called the story "Hard Times Generation."
A reporter's story: Finding homeless families Unemployment in central Florida is so acute that some families are now living in their cars. So how did Scott Pelley's team track down people without addresses?
Now, we've gone back to see how things have changed. It turns out some families are losing their grip on the motels and discovering the homeless shelters are full. Where do they go then? They keep up appearances by day and try to stay out of sight at night - holding on to one another in a hidden America - a place you wouldn't notice unless you ran into the people that we met in the moments before dawn.
Time, has carried us into uncharted territory. The great recession began December 2007. Almost 1,500 mornings ago.
If you were rushing to work this morning, in Seminole County, Florida, it's not likely you'd notice the truck or hear the children getting ready for school...[Full Article]
One in five Americans lost a sizeable amount of their disposable income during the recession, leaving them financially vulnerable and without many options.
The number of Americans considered 'economically insecure' reached a new high during the period from 2008 to 2010 which spanned what is now called the Great Recession.
This news comes just as businesses hope to increase profits amid holiday sales and Christmas shopping, but half of the U.S. population is now worried that they won't be able to buy the presents on their list because of their financial situation.
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Worried: Financial troubles are dampening people's expectations this season
STATEWIDE— The number of New Jersey residents receiving food stamps has doubled in the past four years and is at its highest level in more than a decade as the nation’s still sputtering economy continues to take its toll on the poorest residents of the Garden State, state and federal data show.
As of September, the most recent data released by the state Department of Human Services, more than 400,000 households and nearly 822,000 people were enrolled in the food stamp program, meaning nearly one out of every 10 residents in New Jersey receives assistance...[Full Article]
The number of children living in poverty in the United States increased by 2.6 million since the recession began in 2007, bringing the total to an estimated 15.7 million poor children in 2010, according to researchers from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.
The researchers estimate that nearly 1 in 4 children under the age of 6 now live in poverty.
Big cities and rural areas have the highest rates of poverty among young children. Thirty-one percent of children under age 6 in America’s cities and 30 percent of young children in rural areas are poor.
In contrast, 19 percent of young children living in the suburbs are poor...[Full Article]
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. The number of those living in poverty in America has grown by 2.6 million in just the last 12 months, and that is the largest increase that we have ever seen since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959. Not only that, median household income has also fallen once again. In case you are keeping track, that makes three years in a row. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States dropped 2.3% in 2010 after accounting for inflation. Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation since December 2007. So should we be excited that our incomes are going down and that a record number of Americans slipped into poverty last year? Should we be thrilled that the economic pie is shrinking and that our debt levels are exploding? All of those that claimed that the U.S. economy was recovering and that everything was going to be just fine have some explaining to do. (Read More....)
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - The unemployment rates in Central Florida are hovering in the double-digits and there hasn't been a lot of good news lately for job seekers. In honor of those who are working hard to get back to work, Pie-Fection is offering free pizzas to Central Floridians who have lost their jobs...
The entire middle class Americans will fall under the poverty line in five years, as the gap between the rich and the poor is widening in the United States, says an investigative journalist.
“The middle class, I am afraid, in the United States is not going to exist in another five years and everybody is going to be driven down to the lower poor class,” said Wayne Madsen in a Press TV interview.
“They are going to be working, as many people do, maybe two or three minimum-wage jobs just to feed their families,” he emphasized.
“I think it is all part of the steady drift of the United States into a corporate fascist type society. We have seen that through history before, when very small elite has most of the wealth,” Madsen added.
The journalist quoted a Democratic Party economic advisor as saying that the US commercial real estate will witness a huge collapse in the near future.
“When we see the commercial real estate market collapse, it is going to make the residential real estate market pale, in comparison with that collapse, and this promise is just going to keep compounding,” Madsen further explained.
A new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has revealed that the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is stretching, standing at its largest level since the survey began in 1962.
The report shows that the richest one percent of US households are 225 times richer than the average household.
According to the survey, the figure has almost doubled since the 1960s. The last survey, conducted in 2007, had indicated that the richest one percent had 181 times more money than the average household, whereas in the 1960s the figure reflected a 125-fold wealth gap between the richest and average household.
The global economic recession has also hit the average US citizens much harder, with their assets declining 41 percent since 2007. The rich only lost 27 percent in the same time period.
In 2009, the richest one percent had an average of $14 million, while the average household had average assets of around $62,200.
In calculating household assets, the EPI includes house ownership. The average US citizen has suffered far more from the impact of falling property prices than the rich, the report said.
In an upscale enclave in the San Fernando Valley, there's a new neighbor on the block. He drives a big Mercedes, sometimes a fancy SUV and residents say he's been living in a three-story mansion, which was empty and going into foreclosure.
His name is Dawud Walli, and neighbors say he moved into a huge empty home last July, furnishing nearly every room of the house.
"We feel unsafe. We can't sleep. We have families," say some of the residents who live nearby.
They say Walli made this a party house.
Inside, we found booze and condoms scattered about. But no one really knew what went on here, because some of the windows were covered with tape and garbage bags.
"They don't want to make contact with the neighbors. They do not want to make eye contact with you. They do not talk to you," says someone who lives nearby.
Prosecutors say this is happening across Southern California.
They've caught squatters illegally living in homes in Bel-Air, Marina Del Rey and Winnetka.
For decades, our politicians have been deeply addicted to government debt, they have stood idly by as millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas and they have passed countless business-crushing regulations and they never thought that it would catch up with us. Well, it has. America has been living in the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world, and now that bubble is starting to pop. There has never been such an extended period of unemployment in the United States since the Great Depression, and millions of Americans are losing their homes. Homelessness is skyrocketing, tent cities are popping up everywhere and countless numbers of American families are experiencing the soul-crushing despair that comes from desperately trying to hang on for month after month after month...
ROSELLE PARK, N.J. (1010 WINS) — Getting some shuteye in one New Jersey town could land you in hot water, depending on where you lay your head, 1010 WINS’ Steve Sandberg reports.
In Roselle Park, it is against the law and you could be fined or arrested for sleeping in public...
Source: Reuters * Emergency food pantry use up sharply in recent years
* Food stamps used by 15 million families a month in 2009
By Jerry Norton
WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - The number of U.S. households that reported getting emergency food from a food pantry almost doubled between 2007 and 2009, at the height of the recession, a government report said on Monday.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said the number of households jumped to 5.6 from 3.9 million.
"Households also accessed additional assistance through USDA's 15 food and nutrition assistance programs," the article in the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) "Amber Waves" said.
The USDA oversees the government's food stamp program, also known as SNAP or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, for low-income families and other domestic feeding programs like school lunches.
In the 2009 fiscal year, "15.2 million households participated in SNAP in an average month, up from 12.7 million in FY 2008," the article said...
The recession may be over, but the number of Americans using food stamps continues to soar, up 17 percent over year ago levels, according to a report posted on The Wall Street Journal's website.
A stunning 42,389,619 now use food stamps, up 58.5 percent from August 2007, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data from August cited in the story.
That means nearly 14 percent of American households are still relying on government assistance to buy food as the economy continues to batter families. The total was up 1.3 percent from July...
"The lessons of history ... show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."
These searing words about Depression-era welfare are from Franklin Roosevelt's 1935 State of the Union Address. FDR feared this self-reliant people might come to depend permanently upon government for the necessities of their daily lives. Like narcotics, such a dependency would destroy the fiber and spirit of the nation.
What brings his words to mind is news that 41.8 million Americans are on food stamps, and the White House estimates 43 million will soon be getting food stamps every month.
A seventh of the nation cannot even feed itself...
The Grundy family seemed to be headed down the conventional path followed by American families: Daughter goes to college, graduates, gets a job and her own apartment.
Then something happened.
"She lost her job," Vel Grundy says about daughter Monika, 25. "She kept looking and got very, very discouraged. She moved back home."
Grown children returning home. Brothers and sisters moving in together. Families taking in grandparents. Friends living in the basement.
Fueled by the dismal economy and high unemployment, more Americans — friends and families — are doubling up...
WASHINGTON — The number of people living in poverty in America rose by nearly 4 million to 43.6 million in 2009 — the largest figure in the 51 years for which poverty estimates are available — the Census Bureau said Thursday.
The bureau said in a statement that the official poverty rate was 14.3 percent, or 1 in 7 of Americans, the highest proportion of the population since 1994...
CAMDEN, N.J. - New Jersey's most impoverished city will close all three branches of its public library at year's end unless a rescue can be pulled off.
Camden's library board says the libraries won't be able to afford to stay open past Dec. 31 because of budget cuts from the city government. The city had its subsidy from the state cut.
The library board president says the library system, which opened in 1904, is preparing to donate, sell or destroy its collections, including 187,000 books...
Workers in the U.S. find their jobs are going to people in poor countries who are willing to work 12-hour days for a dollar an hour.
The middle class in America may soon have no pulse at all. Although the U.S. once had the biggest, richest middle class ever, fundamental changes in how giant corporations hire workers mean that the rich are not only getting richer, but everyone else is having to scrimp, save and compete with Third World laborers for work, according to The Business Insider as reported on Yahoo.com.
The “globalism” and “free trade” touted by business leaders and politicians actually turned out to be bad news for middle-class American workers. Now, workers in the U.S. find their jobs are going to people in poor countries who are willing to work 12-hour days for a dollar an hour. With the idea of hiring Third World help rather than U.S. citizens, giant corporations are saying sayonara to the U.S. at a startlingly speedy rate. And with no government penalties imposed if they jump ship, the incentive to stick around simply isn’t there, according to The Business Insider.
As proof of just how tough it is out there, consider these sobering stats:
Some 83% of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1% of the people.
Some 61% of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, up from 49% just two years ago.
Some 36% of Americans say they aren’t contributing to their retirement savings, and 24% say they’ve delayed their planned retirement age in the past year.
For the first time ever in the history of this country, banks own a greater share of the residential housing network in America than all individual Americans combined.
Wondering just how rich the rich really are?
Average Wall Street bonuses for last year were up 17% from a year earlier, and the bottom half of all income earners in the country now collectively own under 1% of the nation’s wealth.
Among those out of work and looking for work, the news is dismal: It now takes an average of 35.2 weeks to find a job, and an ever larger percentage of Americans are finding work at low-paying service and retail jobs. Count about six unemployed Americans for each new job that opens up in the U.S. The simple truth: There just aren’t enough jobs to go around anymore.
Other than their work, Americans actually don’t have all that much to offer in the marketplace. U.S. workers are expensive to hire, they need benefits and the government continues to pass more rules and regulations that make conducting business here ever more onerous.
How are former middle-class workers getting by? For the first time in the history of this country, more than 40% of Americans are getting food stamps. And 21% of all children in America are living below the poverty line this year – the highest rate in two decades.
More than 15 million Americans are unemployed, homelessness has increased by 50 percent in some cities, and 38 million people are receiving food stamps, more than at any time in the program’s almost 50-year history.
Evidence of rising economic hardship is ample. There’s one commonly used standard for measuring it: the U.S. Census Bureau’s poverty rate. It guides much of federal and state spending aimed at helping those unable to make a decent living.
But a number of states have become convinced that the federal figures actually understate poverty, and have begun using different criteria in operating state-based social programs. At the same time, conservative economists are warning that a change in the formula to a threshold that counts more people as poor could lead to an unacceptable increase in the cost of federal and state social service programs.
When Census publishes new numbers for 2009 in September, experts predict they’ll show a steep rise in the poverty rate. One independent researcher estimates the data will show the biggest year-to-year increase in recorded history.
According to Richard Bavier, a former analyst for the federal Office of Management and Budget, already available data about employment rates, wages, and food stamp enrollment suggest that an additional 5.7 million people were officially poor in 2009. That would bring the total number of people with incomes below the federal poverty threshold to more than 45 million. The poverty rate, Bavier expects, will hit 15 percent — up from 13.2 percent in 2008, when the Great Recession first started to take its toll.
Still, the U.S. Census Bureau’s new numbers will offer only a partial picture of how the nation’s sputtering economy is affecting the poorest Americans — a problem state officials and the Obama administration want to address...
(Reuters) - Almost a quarter of a billion people moved out of slum conditions in the past decade, driven by rapid economic growth in emerging giants India and China, but the number of people living in them continues to rise, the United Nations housing agency said on Friday...
