Sunday, January 27, 2013

Childhood Poverty Up in US


New report details explosive growth of poverty among Detroit children By James Brewer 26 January 2013 http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/26/detr-j26.html

[Excerpted] In the last ten years, child poverty in Detroit has risen 65 percent, according to a new study issued this week. The report, produced by Data Driven Detroit (D3) is entitled “State of the Detroit Child” and funded by the Skillman Foundation. A picture of unprecedented social devastation in the city of Detroit is revealed in the data.

The growth of poverty over the last decade has resulted in 57 percent of Detroit’s children living below the federally-mandated poverty line in 2011. The report presents figures for children of different age groups, showing that the youngest age group, 5 years and under, have the highest incidence of poverty at 62.7 percent. [end]

Report documents mass poverty in California By Thomas Gaist and Marc Wells 21 January 2013 http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/21/cali-j21.html

[Excerpted] A recent poverty report detailed the conditions of growing social misery and impoverishment in California. Issued by the Center for the Next Generation, “Prosperity Threatened: Perspectives on Childhood Poverty in California,” presents a detailed breakdown of poverty statistics, focusing on the growth in child poverty and economically distressed single mothers. Taken at face value, the report's findings are devastating. In truth, the social situation of working people in California is even worse than the picture painted in the report.

According to “Prosperity Threatened,” the official poverty rate in California is 16.6 percent (6.1 million people) while another measure developed by the Census Bureau puts the rate at 23.5 percent (8.7 million people). According to the Census numbers, California is the most impoverished state in the US, ahead of Hawaii and the District of Columbia.

The data indicate that nearly one half of California’s children live in poverty or “perilously close” to poverty. Between 2006 and 2011, the childhood poverty rate rose 4 percentage points, for an overall increase of 21 percent in the number of children living in poverty. These data are based on the federal poverty threshold of $23,021 for a family of four, or $11,484 for an individual.Between 2008 and 2011, according to the report, poverty has jumped dramatically in many of the state’s counties... [end]

Ranks of US working poor grow dramatically By Kate Randall 18 January 2013 http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/18/poor-j18.html

[Excerpted] A new report by the Working Poor Families Project shows that the ranks of the working poor have grown dramatically in the wake of the Great Recession.

Based on new data from the US Census Bureau, “Low-Income Working Families: The Growing Economic Gap,” shows that the number of low-income working families in the US increased to 10.4 million in 2011, up from 10.2 million only the year before. The total number of people in low-income working families now stands at a staggering 47.5 million—accounting for nearly one-third of all working families, or about 15 percent of the entire US population.

As the number of working families rises, the chasm between the income of the richest families and that of the working poor continues to widen. ... The income of the nation’s wealthiest households, meanwhile, is growing at record levels.

The study defines the working poor as those living below 200 percent of the official poverty threshold, or about $45,600 a year for a family of four with two children. Between 2007 and 2011, the share of working families that are low-income rose from 28 percent to 32 percent nationally.  [end]


Majia here: Even Americans not living in poverty were affected deeply by the 'Great Recession':


Americans saw wealth plummet 40 percent from 2007 to 2010, Federal Reserve says http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/fed-americans-wealth-dropped-40-percent/2012/06/11/gJQAlIsCVV_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines_Tue

A Part-Time, Low-Wage Epidemic: The jobs gained recently by the U.S. economy are disproportionately low-paying, insecure ones. By Mortimer Zuckerman. The Wall Street Journal November 5, 2012 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203707604578094601253124258.html

Majia here: Inequality hurts economic growth and produces market and social instability.

The Price of Inequality and the Myth of OpportunityBy Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate 06 June 12 http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/11791-focus-the-price-of-inequality-and-the-myth-of-opportunity

[Excerpted] "America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity, and others view it in much the same light. But, while we can all think of examples of Americans who rose to the top on their own, what really matters are the statistics: to what extent do an individual’s life chances depend on the income and education of his or her parents? 

Nowadays, these numbers show that the American dream is a myth. There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe – or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there are data.

This is one of the reasons that America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries – and its gap with the rest has been widening. In the “recovery” of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured 93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators – like wealth, health, and life expectancy... (read rest at link above)


1 comment:

  1. Majia you may find this interesting, I used to leech off of Higgins until Sandy wiped out his house, now I found where to generate the reports on EPA

    Here is a link to the Gamma charts---see the Beta charts below, when Fuku and local sources go off, you will see the big moves on the BETA



    http://www.epa.gov/radnet/radnet-data/index.html

    Man, It is hard to find the right link at the Radnet site, never seen a site so bad.



    HERE is the BETA Charts! finally found them. Higgins used to link up these charts on his nicely deisgned site before Hurricane Sandy wiped out his house and servers.



    https://cdxnode64.epa.gov/radnet-public/query.do

    ReplyDelete

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