One in three Americans slipped below the poverty line between 2009 and 2011

[applegrove]

One in three Americans slipped below the poverty line between 2009 and 2011

By Brad Plumer at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/08/one-in-three-americans-slipped-below-the-poverty-line-between-2009-and-2011/?wprss=rss_AllWPStoriesandBlogs&Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost

"SNIP.................................


How many people in the United States are poor? It's a surprisingly tricky question.

The "official" poverty rate was 15 percent in 2012. That number gives the impression that poverty is a bright line, that roughly one sixth of the country is poor and the rest are not poor. But that's a bit misleading. As a new report from the Census Bureau shows, a much, much larger subset of people slip in and out of poverty all the time.

For instance: Between 2009 and 2011, nearly one third of the country — 31.6 percent — fell below that official poverty line for at least two months. By contrast, only 3.5 percent of the U.S. population remained poor for that entire period. Both of those figures rose after the recession




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[Shandris]

1. The 'official' poverty rate is so low as to be insulting.

It -does- surprise me that so many fell beneath it, but I'm -highly- skeptical that only 3.5% remained there. Then again, you can 'escape' poverty by having a minimum wage job. In fact, if you're a single person, you can escape it by almost 50%!

Thank goodness that once you work at McDonald's, you're no longer poor by over half again as much. Yay America.

[NuclearDem]

2. What recovery?