The Stats: poverty, income and health insurance

The Census Bureau recently released the latest data (2010) on poverty, income, and health insurance in America.

The Census Bureau recently released the latest data (2010) on poverty, income, and health insurance in America. Generally and unfortunately, median household income declined, the poverty rate increased, and the percentage without health insurance coverage was not statistically different from the previous year. Here are some other important findings from the report. 
 
One out of every six Americans, or 46.2 million, lived in poverty in 2010. This is an increase of almost three million since 2009, and the largest since the Census started keeping track 52 years ago. Similarly, those without health insurance set a record in 2010 at 49.9 million, up from 49 million in 2009.
 
More than one third of the population is considered low income. In 2010, 103.6 million people were living below $44,000 for a family of four.
 
More than one in five children are living in poverty. For African American children, the poverty rate is nearly 40 percent, versus 12.4 percent for white children.
 
Income inequality: households in the bottom 20 percent by income saw their incomes fall by 4.5 percent, more than six times as much as the households in the top twenty.
 
Racial and ethnic disparities widen. Poverty rates among African Americans and Hispanics, 27.4 and 26.6 percent respectively, are more than double that of whites, which is now 9.9 percent, up from 9.4 percent in 2009.
 
Young adults (25-34) are moving in with their parents - 5.9 million in 2010, up from 4.7 million in the spring of 2007. Those not living with parents (age 15-24) saw the largest income decline of any age group as their income fell by more than nine percent in the last year.
 
Employers providing health insurance continues to decline. Nearly 1.5 million Americans lost their employer-sponsored health insurance in 2010. To the contrary, programs such as Medicaid covered 48.6 million people, mitigating the number of Americans who lost health coverage.
 
Poverty affects us all.  More people in poverty means fewer consumers, which slows our economic growth and costs America jobs. For more on how hunger and poverty affects us all click here.
 
The report Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010 can be found here .