U.S. Poverty Rate Declines Significantly

AP:

The nation's poverty rate dropped last year, the first significant decline since President Bush took office.

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that 36.5 million Americans, or 12.3 percent -- were living in poverty last year. That's down from 12.6 percent in 2005.

Read the whole story: AP

Comments

[GiveMeStrength]

12:35 PM on 08/29/2007

This is only because the Bush Adminstration hs consistently lowerd the standards for classifing people in poverty.

If you are a family of 4 and you have a yearly income of $50K in 2007 America, you are living in poverty.

[curiousasheck]

11:17 AM on 08/29/2007

Chest beating of the republicorps was almost deafening as new poverty figures were trotted out this week. But just because the figures dropped a whole 0.3% keep in mind thats a third of a penny on a dollars worth, put another way.

[Gary47]

07:39 PM on 08/28/2007

Bogus nonsense. This is only because the bush admin has worked tirelessly to lower the bar so fewer and fewer people qualify.

[truthyguy]

05:49 PM on 08/28/2007

Knowing the Bush administration all they did was lower the poverty line.

Figures lie and liars figure.

[readyforchange]

07:18 PM on 08/28/2007

Agreed.

[TheNewHampshireLiberal]

02:49 PM on 08/28/2007

This is from the same people who brought you the urban substitution CPI, birth death model for job creation and the ever changing home sales numbers.

I don't believe any statistic this government produces any more.

[nomoredead]

12:34 AM on 08/29/2007

ditto.......

[seamusnh]

02:22 PM on 08/28/2007

Somewhere, John Edwards is not happy. After all, he is the man with the plan when it comes to poverty in America....

[OneVoiceInACrowd]

01:33 PM on 08/28/2007

We spin this into a negative by saying "What the hell took so long?" This should have happened sooner. The numbers reflect last year, which were 5 years into an economic growth cycle. It doesn't seem like raising the minimum wage had anything to do with this. I think we can all agree that this is a good thing. Meanwhile a hedge fund manager made 1.7 billion dollars last year. How the ef is that possible?

[dadw5boys]

01:15 PM on 08/28/2007

WOW, A SMALL RAISE IN THE MINIUNM WAGE RASIES A LOT OF PEOPLE OUT OF POVERTY!
IF YOU GET PEOPLE OUT OF POVERTY THEY MIGHT GET HOPE. THEY MIGHT WORK HARDER. THEY MIGHT LOVE THIER NEIGHBOR.
I KNOW THE CHRISTIANS HATE NOT HAVING THEY POOR TO HOLD UP TO GET GOVERNMENT MONEY BUT THEY NEED TO MOVE OUT OF THE WAY.

[billu]

01:38 PM on 08/28/2007

Except that the min wage increase happened in 2007 and this was for 2005-2006. Nice try though.

[dadw5boys]

04:03 PM on 08/29/2007

You really belive anything this adminstration releases.
Heck man they even chaged the way unemployment rates are reported from ACTUAL to SEASON AVERAGE.
How many people work on farms?
Not enough AMERICANS to make that change from Actual to Season Average even reasonable.
Like the Texas Education Sucess rates were forged when they dropped kids out of school on paper to keep their test scores from counting.
The kids didnot know they had dropped out of school and showed up daily.
The list of lies is too huge to post, WMD'S.

[billu]

12:41 PM on 08/28/2007

How do we spin this into a negative????

[getoffmedz]

08:18 PM on 08/28/2007

billu - how do we spin this into a positive?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/5088805.html

Well worth reading from the Houston Chronicle. The last paragraph is very disturbing.

Go ahead and refute this article.