© Wrangler, ShutterstockA homeless man sits on the street.
New Census data suggests that even after the U.S. officially exited the recession in June 2009, the population continued to feel the echoes of economic trouble.
In 2010, the poverty rate increased to 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent from the previous year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today (Sept. 13). That's the highest rate since 1993, which also saw a 15.1-percent poverty rate.
The poverty rate fell each year between 1993 and 2000, hitting a low of 11.3 percent in 2000. Between 2007 and 2010, the agency reported, the poverty rate has gone up 2.6 percentage points.
Social scientists have found a multitude of effects from the recession that started in December 2007 and continued through 2009. A May 2011 survey about personal finance found that more than a third of Americans felt their financial situation was getting worse, not better. Even pets are suffering, according to an April 2011 survey of veterinarians, which reported an increase in fleas, ticks, heartworm and other preventable conditions as pet owners try to save money by skipping the vet.
The new numbers are part of the Census report "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010." Since 2007, the Census Bureau found, real median household income has declined 6.4 percent. The decline was significant in white and black households, and in areas of the country outside the Northeast.
About 9.2 million families were in poverty in 2010, up from 8.8 million in 2009. That's an estimated 46.2 million people in poverty, the report concluded, 2.6 million more than in 2009. Poverty thresholds depend on the size of a family, but a family of five, for example, would have to make no more than $26,675 a year to qualify as impoverished in 2010.
The percentage of people with health insurance stayed consistent with 2009. About 9.8 percent of children under age 18, or 7.3 million kids, are without health insurance. Adults included, 16.3 percent of Americans currently go without health insurance, a total of 49.9 million people.
Growing up in the upper middle class in the 1960s everything seemed fine. There was nothing to worry about unless you were JFK, MLK, or not white. So I thought I'd make it through.
But now I'm unemployed and with no savings. If I had saved a "windfall" I got in the '90s, I might have been in good shape for 3 or 4 more years. Would that have been enough time to find another job?
That's not the point.
For me now, the "social safety net" is a big lie. But I still believe in the dream it was built on. Now I find that there were people mouthing that dream who never really believed in it.
If a higher level of physical existence for Mankind is really possible, then why are others so convinced it's not? That's what I was supposed to learn between my young "sucker" days and now. And in that sense I feel more fortunate than some. I got an answer to that question: False data. If your reasoning is based on false data, your conclusions will be false.
Of course, most people I mention this to think it's me that got the false data! They think (I suppose) that man's inhumanity to man is an inevitable part of life. That the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is just a communistic sham.
Why I am I so sure that they are wrong?