1 in 7 Americans Lives in Poverty

According to recent reports by the Census Bureau, 1 in 7 Americans now lives in poverty. This is an amazing statistic. This means that 43.6 million people live in poverty. 50.7 million people live without health insurance. This is living really close to the edge. One emergency event can result in homelessness: one emergency room visit, one car accident, one arrest, one sick child. There are many definitions of poverty but most land somewhere here – lacking the resources to meet basic needs for healthy living or lacking sufficient resources for food, shelter or clothing. The US Census Bureau defines the threshold for poverty – the poverty line – differently from year to year and state to state but the 2009 numbers used determined that ‘poverty’ was income below $10,956 per year for an individual and below $18,310 per year for a family of three. That is not a lot of clams, dough, bucks, mint, franklins…well, you get the idea. The smart folks at Slate.com did a ten part series about the changes in poverty in this country that is worth a read. Surf on over to see the series: http://www.slate.com/id/2267157/ and get some education about why we are at a 51 year high in the number of folks slogging it out in poverty.

Tags: census, haven, homelessness, poverty, tjach

This entry was posted on September 23, 2010 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Ending Homelessness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.