EconomicsUSA: PovertyUSA: New stats from recent Census

The 2010 Census, taken again during the last summer in accord with the requirements of the USA Constitution, has produced a deeply sad statistic. Figures tell us that poverty has grown in America. MarketWatch's Ruth Mantell reports "Poverty rate highest since 1994: Census" (Sept14,2k10)

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The poverty rate rose to 14.3% in 2009, the highest since 1994, up from 13.2% in 2008, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. Last year there were a record 43.6 million people in poverty. Meanwhile, real median household income in 2009 was $49,777, not statistically different from the prior year. Real median income fell 1.8% for family households, and rose 1.6% for nonfamily households. Also, the number of people with health insurance fell to 253.6 million in 2009 from 255.1 million in 2008, the first year that the number of people with health insurance has decreased since 1987, when the government started collecting comparable data. The number of uninsured rose to 50.7 million from 46.3 million.

A commenter Growth33 chimes in:

will get worse if US doesn't bring back the poor peoples' job, the manufacturing.

'Free Market Experiment' USA poor/middle class are guinea pigs of the Wallstreet. Sad but true. I love the this 'Free Market Bluff' that shifted poor jobs abroad.

1) China devaluing currency
2) Japan devaluing currency
3) USA devaluing currency since 2000 or something [like that].
4) Every nation is ready to devalue their currency when needed. What happened to the free market dictating the market?

5) China restricting multinational corporations from growing and prospering.
6) Airbus receiving EU's subsidies, Boeing in USA [likew+z]
7) Bush steel tarrifs, import taxes.
8) Russia bans wheat exports
9) OPEC's controlling of oil price, quotas on nations for oil productions etc.
10) China, India and the rest of the world will shutdown the import gates if they suffer the kind of deficit and trade imbalances USA suffers. Thats a gurrentee. Countries around the world already have so many restrictions on imports etc ... especially China.

The joke is on the USA poor and middle class. Shifting their jobs to cheaper countries in the name of free market ....

I've fixed a few spellings, a bit of grammar, and removed an incendiary fragment of a sentence.
Yahoo!

But the commenter turns the discussion to remarks attempting to answer the question "why?" What caused the growth of poverty in America?, which the census stats reveal. It's a question worth asking.

Further reports ...:

"Poverty rate at h+est level in half-century, data show" WaPo (Sept16,2k10)

-- EconoMix