The Census figures for 2009 are to be released this week. Demographers who track poverty trends state that the United States hasn’t seen numbers like this since the time of LBJ. The Associated Press reports:
Interviews with six demographers who closely track poverty trends found wide consensus that 2009 figures are likely to show a significant rate increase to the range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent.
Should those estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country, or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959. The previous high was in 1980 when the rate jumped 1.3 percentage points to 13 percent during the energy crisis.
Among the 18-64 working-age population, the demographers expect a rise beyond 12.4 percent, up from 11.7 percent. That would make it the highest since at least 1965, when another Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, launched the war on poverty that expanded the federal government's role in social welfare programs from education to health care
Others believe that the poverty rate could reach as high as 15%:
A formula by Richard Bavier, a former analyst with the White House Office of Management and Budget who has had high rates of accuracy over the last decade, predicts poverty will reach 15 percent.
That would put the rate at the highest level since 1993. The all-time high was 22.4 percent in 1959, the first year the government began tracking poverty. It dropped to a low of 11.1 percent in 1973 after Johnson's war on poverty.
Of course the Democrats will try and blame Bush, even though they had control of Congress since 2007; not to mention their role in the corruption of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that propelled us down this awful road.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_poverty_in_america
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