CENSUS: About one in six in powerty and 50 million uninsured in the U.S.

AMERİCA BULLETIN (September 13th, 2011)

The U.S. poverty rate has risen to 15.1%, the highest since 1983, the U.S. Census Bureau reports in the statistics study, titled “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage: 2010,”.

Highlights from report:

• Median household money income for the nation was $49,400 in 2010, a decline of 2.3 percent from 2009, in real terms.

• The 2010 official poverty rate for the nation was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009, with 46.2 million people in poverty, an increase of 2.6 million since 2009.

• About 46.2 million people, or nearly one in six, were in poverty, compared with 43.6 million, or 14.3%, in 2009.

• The percentage of people without health insurance coverage in 2010, 16.3 percent, was not statistically different from the rate in 2009. The number of uninsured increased to 49.9 million in 2010 from 49.0 million in 2009.

The bureau says that if Social Security payments were excluded from income, the number of people 65 and over in poverty would be 14 million higher in 2010.