America Increasingly Looks Like A Developing Nation As 30% Of Americans Rapidly Approach Poverty, Or

[inna]

America Increasingly Looks Like A Developing Nation As 30% Of Americans Rapidly Approach Poverty, Or Are Already There


http://www.businessinsider.com/30-of-america-approaching-poverty-2010-1


A shocking report from Brookings exposes just how massive America's poverty problem is. While substantial reductions in poverty were made during the 1990's, America's poor have been rocked by the dual economic downturns since 2000.


The result is that poverty grew at twice the rate of U.S. population growth from 2000 - 2008, and now encompasses 39.1 million Americans.



If one were to expand the definition of poverty to merely 'poor' (yet still very poor), then a eye-popping 30% of the nation lives no higher than twice the poverty base line.

Brookings: In 2008, 91.6 million people—more than 30 percent of the nation’s population—fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. More individuals lived in families with incomes between 100 and 200 percent of poverty line (52.5 million) than below the poverty line (39.1 million) in 2008. Between 2000 and 2008, large suburbs saw the fastest growing low-income populations across community types and the greatest uptick in the share of the population living under 200 percent of poverty.

Here's where it gets even more ridiculous -- If you break down the data to individual areas, then there's at least ten U.S. cities with poverty rates of around 30%. Moreover, Brookings latest research highlights how poverty has been getting worse especially fast in the suburbs, thus the U.S. is faced with the challenges of suburban poverty like never before:



California and Florida have been hit especially hard:



Finally, this bad news has likely become far worse already. This research doesn't include 2009 since full data hasn't come out yet. When it does, expect a huge up-tick in poverty rates given since that's when the real brunt of the recent crisis hit 'Main St.'.

Unfortunately, our regression analyses suggest that these metro areas are not likely to see such decreases in 2009, a year in which no metro area proved exempt from increased unemployment rates. Although the Census will not officially release poverty rates for 2009 until fall of next year, job losses alone foretell a substantially larger increase in the metropolitan poverty rate than the 0.3 percent reported from 2007 to 2008, when unemployment increases were just beginning to accelerate.

[Jim Sagle]

1. Developing or devolving?

:shrug:

[jtrockville]

10. "Fallen Empire" seems to be an appropriate term.

[nightgaunt]

16. No--- fallen Republic first then Empire

First we are in a Great Depression and Obama is making sure we will fall into a Greater Depression and then maybe the Shock Doctrine specialists in rebuilding will come out to make the USA
over into an empire on the inside too. Then they will get that theocratic-corporate empire they have been longing for since at least 1934.

[Demeter]

14. Devolving is the Correct Term

back to the cave man.

[Edweird]

2. Well, the good news is that he's cutting spending....

:sarcasm:

[truedelphi]

5. And that, of course, was the main premise of the McCain campaign -

To cut spending at the Federal Budget Level!!!

[inna]

3. .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7568487


:banghead:

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. To put it in context, here are the poverty guidelines:

multiply these figures by 200% to get the "federal poverty level" the article is talking about.

The 2009 Poverty Guidelines for the
48 Contiguous States and the District of Columbia
Persons in family Poverty guideline
1 ............................. $10,830
2 ............................. 14,570
3 .............................. 18,310
4 ............................. 22,050
5 .............................. 25,790
6 ............................. 29,530
7 ............................ 33,270
8 .............................. 37,010
For families with more than 8 persons, add $3,740 for each additional person.

(I have no idea if this is NET or GROSS income.)

[madrchsod]

9. all government guidelines are based on gross

so if you are a dollar over an amount you do not receive any benefits. so the real numbers of those in poverty is much higher.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. Thanks.

:hi:

[Joe the Liberal]

6. k&r n/t

[leftstreet]

7. K&R

[howard112211]

8. Socialism is knocking on America's southern doors, but America does not want to hear.

How do you help those who think your help is going to cost them their freedom? :shrug:

[katty]

11. i say devolving and poverty on the rise everyday

we are in a (modern day) depression, swimming in debt and leveraged above our eyeballs--no jobs being created (not even shovel ready or re-education for green jobs to be filled). There is no rescue in the critical 'now' time. Cut Pentagon funding and slap fines & implement emergency regulations on the banking system/Wall Street casinos. Will this be done by our government?
Of course not - and the bleeding will continue.

[Dappleganger]

13. The percentage of poor in the suburbs has really spiked...

they all matter, but it does show that poverty knows no boundaries.

[femrap]

15. I believe this was the plan all along.

Just so you know....CA and FL have finally caught up with OH and MI and the rest of the 'Rust Belt.'

And NC...the state that made furniture...well, it's all made in china now.

WASF.