More in Michigan fall into poverty

[Bozita]

Source: Detroit News

Last Updated: September 22. 2011 1:00AM
More in Michigan fall into poverty
U.S. census data finds 16.8% of state's residents are poor
Mike Wilkinson and Serena Maria Daniels/ The Detroit News

Just as the nation was declaring the recession officially over last year, the landscape in Michigan was far from rosy: The poverty rate in 2010 was its highest in at least four decades, and incomes continued to fall as the economic shift away from manufacturing continued, new census data released this morning shows.

The data reveals problems that could grow worse with plans to cut aid to the poor while also slashing spending on higher education, one of the surest ways to avoid poverty.

Poverty in the state — earnings below $22,314 for a couple with two children — crept up from 16.2 percent to 16.8 percent of the population, with the percent of children under 18 in poverty rising from 22.5 percent to 23.5 percent.

-snip-

Median household income also fell, to $45,413, a drop of 1.2 percent from 2009 and a stunning 19.3 percent from 2000.


Read more: http://detnews.com/article/20110922/METRO/109220409/More-in-Michigan-fall-into-poverty#ixzz1YeqDFOMB

[alp227]

1. BUT according to governor Snyder, they're just lazy bums living off the dole

so they deserve to get their benefit money cut...while Snyder's rich friends get more tax breaks. And Michigan is the auto industry state, and you gotta wonder about NAFTA too.

[vanboggie]

2. The ALEC agenda is nearing completion

We're toast.

[ananda]

3. This is happening in Texas too.

Twenty percent and up are living at poverty or below. See:

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/more-than-1-in-5-austin-residents-live-1872403.html

More people in Austin lived in poverty, were on food stamps and saw their median family household incomes shrink in 2010, according to new census data out today depicting the growing toll of the weakened economy in Central Texas and across the state.

About 18 percent of all Texans lived in poverty in 2010, more than 3 percentage points above the national average.

But the percentage was even higher in Austin, where more than 1 in 5 people — and nearly 28 percent of children younger than 18 — lived below the federal poverty line last year, the third consecutive year the poverty rate increased in the capital.

In 2009, about 18.4 percent of all Austin residents and 27.4 percent of children younger than 18 lived in poverty, according to census estimates last year.

The data confirm that more Central Texans are struggling to make ends meet, social providers said.

[sarcasmo]

4. Seeing this first hand here in Michigan. My neighbor can't afford to buy a new stove so he cooks on

the grill. My wife's brother is in the process of losing his home to foreclosure. When you loose a job that pays 80,000 and find one paying 40,000 it's hard to keep your current lifestyle. Just a sad situation all around.

[Tansy_Gold]

5. They didn't fall.

They were pushed.




TG