Report from SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS INDIANA UNIVERSITY–
AT RISK: AMERICA’S POOR DURING AND AFTER THE GREAT RECESSION

Findings
1. The Great Recession has left behind the largest number of long-term unemployed people since records were first kept in 1948. More than four million Americans report that they have been unemployed for more than 12 months. Although the official rate of unemployment is declining, much of this apparent progress is attributable to the fact that many adults are giving up on the search for a job. The more telling indicator of an economy’s job-producing performance, the ratio of the number of employed people to the number of working-age adults (the “job-to-people” ratio), has improved only slightly since the Great Recession ended in June 2009. If the long-term unemployed lose their unemployment insurance benefits before the economy produces enough well-paying jobs to approach full employment, the ranks of the “new poor” will steadily swell
between now and 2017.
2. Large numbers of Americans are already poor. The official federal measure of poverty and a new “Supplemental Measure,” which accounts for several shortcomings in the official measure, both reveal a sobering fact: poverty in America is remarkably widespread. In 2010, about 46.2 million Americans were living in poverty according to the official measure, or about 15.1% of the U.S. population. The rate of poverty is slightly larger (16%) using the supplemental measure. The
five states with the highest rates of poverty are somewhat different according to the two measures (2009): Mississippi (23.2%), Arizona (21.3%), New Mexico (19.6%), Arkansas (19.1%), and Georgia (18.5%), according to the official measure; California (22.4%), Arizona (21.6%), Florida (19.5%), Georgia (18.8%), and Hawaii (18.0%), according to the supplemental measure. The supplemental measure accounts for geographical differences in the cost of living and thus gives more emphasis
to poverty in urban areas, where day-to-day living costs, especially housing, are higher than they are in rural areas. Continue reading »

From Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2011:

The Census Bureau released its annual report on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States today. Here are some quick bullet points:

–Median household income in 2010 was $49,445, down 2.3% from 2009 and down 6.4% from prerecession level.

–Median household income in 2010 was $49,445. That’s 7.1% lower (adjusted for inflation) than it was in 1999

–Median earnings for full time male worker in 2010 was $47,715. Adjusted for inflation, it was $48,245 in 1978.

–Median earnings for men who worked full-time year round was $47,715 in 2010, down 0.4%. For women it was $36,931, up 1.5%.
–Best off 5% of households (adjusted for household size) got 21% of income in 2010.

– Official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1%, up from 14.3% in 2009, third consecutive annual increase

–In 2010, 49.90 million Americans (16.3%) without health insurance vs. 48.99 million (16.1%) in 2009.

–The fraction of foreign-born without health insurance in 2010 was more than double native-born population.
Wall Street Journal article