Wisdom Trust Poverty News 22-09-2009
Poverty News.
Almost 40 Million Americans Living In Poverty.
Nearly 40 million Americans lived below the bread line in 2008 as the recession dragged down incomes sparking the first major rise in the poverty rate in five years, an official report showed.
“Real median household income declined by 3.6% between 2007 and 2008 ... and the decline was widespread,” said the annual Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States report from the Census Bureau.
The official poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2%, up from 12.5% in 2007, according to the report. This marked the first significant rise since 2004, according to one expert.
In the United States, a person or family is considered poor if their income is less than the poverty threshold for their size of household. The poverty threshold for one person in 2008 was just under $11,000, and for a family of four was $22,025.
Last year average US household income dropped from $52,163 in 2007 to $50,303, a fall that the report blamed on the economic crisis, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Nearly 25% of blacks, or 9.4 million people, lived in poverty in the United States in 2008, compared to 8.6% of whites, or 17 million people.
Poverty hit the children of single mothers particularly hard, with more than half of children under the age of six who were being raised by a single mum living in poverty.
There was a slim silver lining: the percentage of people without health insurance held steady, at 15.4%, and the number of people with health insurance rose from 253.4 million in 2007 to 255.1 million in 2008. But that still meant that 46.3 million people in the United States had no health coverage last year - up from 45.7 million in 2007.
Although the poverty rate and uninsured rate for black Americans remained statistically unchanged from 2007, they were still triple or double the rates for whites. The uninsured rate for non-Hispanic whites in 2008 rose to 10.8% from 10.4%, around half the 19.1% for blacks.
Among Asians, 11.8% (1.6 million) lived in poverty in 2008, up from 10.2% (1.3 million) in 2007. And among Hispanics, 23.2% (11 million) were in poverty in 2008, higher than the 21.5% (9.9 million) in 2007.
The uninsured rate for Asians remained statistically unchanged from 2007, at 17.6%, while the rate for Hispanics fell from 32% to 30.7%.
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A Footnote On Education...
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1. A Fact From Our Library
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A typical four-square-mile patch of tropical rainforest contains up to 100 reptile species, 60 amphibian species & 150 butterfly species.
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GlobeBatteries for: Laptops, Notebooks, PDA, Pocket PCs, Blue Tooth, Mobile Phones, MP3 Portable Audio, Cordless Phones, Cameras, Digital
Cameras, DVD Players, Video Cameras, Electronic Games, 2-Way Radios, MP3 Portable Audio, Anything!
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2. An Ecotip From Our Library
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Change Your Motor Oil And Oil Filter Regularly.
You should try to change the oil in your car on a regular basis. In addition to making your car or truck last longer, replacing the oil and oil filter regularly will also help fuel economy.
Check your owner's manual for specific recommendations about how often to change. Ask the service station if they recycle used oil, or if you do it yourself, take your old oil to someplace that does recycle. Ask for recycled oil as a replacement.
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