The poverty rate rose to 14.3 percent during 2009 from 13.2 percent the previous year as household income stayed flat and the number of people without health insurance reached its highest level since such data has been collected, the government announced Thursday.
The first year of Barack Obama’s presidency started with 700,000 people losing their jobs each month and sensational reports of formerly middle-class families crowding tent cities across the country. The tent cities, it turned out, were there before the recession started, but the rise in poverty was real: For working age people between 18 and 64, 2009 saw the highest poverty rate 12.9 percent since 1965.
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In 2009, 43.6 million people lived in poverty, up from 39.8 million in 2008, according to to the Census Bureau’s annual Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage report. The poverty threshold for a family of four is an annual household income of $21,954. Household incomes, surprisingly, did not see a statistically significant change last year, but have declined 4.2 percent since the start of the recession.
In 2008, the poverty rate climbed from 12.5 to 13.2 percent, median household income fell 3.6 percent and the number of uninsured grew from 45.7 to 46.3 million.
