U.S. Census Bureau Report Shows Poverty is On the Rise

More than 37.3 million people lived in poverty in the United States in 2007 -- an increase from 36.5 million in 2006, according to the US Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage, which was released today:

The poverty threshold for 2007 was set at 21,000 dollars for a family of four, regardless of whether they lived in a smaller US city such as Milwaukee or a large city like Los Angeles, where the cost of living was significantly higher.

"The number of people without health insurance coverage decreased to 45.7 million people in 2007" from 47 million in 2006, said David Johnson, head of the housing and household economic statistics division of the Census Bureau.

But while the report showed slightly more Americans had health coverage than in 2006, the changes were too little to cheer about...

Children are disproportionately affected by poverty, the report showed.

Eighteen percent of children in the United States lived in poverty, compared with 11 percent of adults, aged 18-64, and just under 10 percent of senior citizens.

More Americans aged 65 years and older would be pushed into poverty if they did not receive Social Security benefits, the report showed.

More Americans falling into poverty, and just a few gaining access to health insurance?

As Paul Fronstin, a senior research associate at the Employee Benefits Research Institute, puts it in the article quoted above:

"This isn't progress."

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