Bleak forecast for new US poverty rate
The Census Bureau will release its annual Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage report today and the expectations are grim.
This year, the poverty line for a family of four living in the continental U.S. is $22,050 in annual income. Last year, around 13.2 percent of the country was at or below that line; this year, the rate is expected to jump to about 15 percent. If the estimates are correct, more than one in seven people in this country was poor last year; the increase will be the highest single-year increase in poverty since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959.
Louise Story, Wall Street and finance reporter for The New York Times, talks to us about the significance of this report and how it illustrates the country’s economic health.
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