One in four black people in the United States, 9.9 million people, lived in poverty in 2009, the Census Bureau reported today.
The national poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent – the highest since 1994 – from13.2 percent in 2008. The rise was steepest for children, with one in five residents under 18 living below the official poverty line, the bureau said.
“These numbers are a moral outrage,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “In a nation as wealthy as the United States, there is simply no justification for our tolerance of the level of poverty.”
At a forum with the Center for American Progress which took place after the bureau released the numbers, Henderson said that the increased poverty challenges our nation’s internal security. The report provides the most detailed picture yet of the impact of the recession and unemployment on incomes. It also found that the temporary increases in benefits in last year’s stimulus bill eased the burdens on millions of families.
“Had there been no recent federal intervention, the problem could have been worse,” he said. “Most economists would agree that President Obama inherited the worst economic climate we have seen in nearly a century.”
“And had he not initiated the Economic Recovery Bill, enacted in February 2009, unemployment would have been higher, sending millions of people into poverty.”
For a single adult in 2009, the poverty line was $10,830 in pretax cash income; for a family of four, $22,050.
The number of residents without health insurance in 2009 climbed to 51 million, from46 million in 2008. The share of children who were uninsured fell, though, reflecting an expansion of government health programs covering low-income children.
“Children who grow up in poverty not only suffer themselves, but they also impose a large economic cost on the country overall when they become adults,” said Harry Holzer, professor of public policy at Georgetown University and Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute. “When these children become adults, they have lower levels of educational attainment; they have lower levels of earnings and employment. They also have worse health and they are more likely to become incarcerated.”
Holzer’s studies estimate that child poverty costs the nation conservatively $500 billion a year, or four percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.
Health experts expect the share of residents without health coverage to decline in coming years as the health care overhaul adopted by Congress in March begins to take effect.
To see the “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States:
2009″ report, go to http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p60-238.pdf