The Census Bureau has released the 2010 report on poverty in America. Follow this site for in depth reports, and lots of charts, on this topic during the next week.

The press is making much of the actual numbers of Americans in poverty. Remember, however, that with a growing population, the numbers will increase even if the rate stays the same. Every person living in poverty matters, but it is the increase or decrease in the rate that will describe most accurately what the economy is doing.

46,180,000 Americans are believed to live in poverty according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Just over 33 million live in families and about 12.4 million are unrelated individuals. 15,895,000 Americans live in poverty in homes headed by a female with no husband present.

The Term “American”, for this piece, includes non-citizens living in the United States. There will be a later report on that topic. For now, they’re included and the media is making the same assumption.

Numbers of Americans living in poverty 1981-2010. Click on chart for a larger version.

Percentage of Americans living in poverty 1961 to 2010. Click on the chart for a larger version.

Percentage of Americans living in poverty 1981 to 2010. Click on the chart for a larger image.

Americans living in a family group, in poverty, make up 71% of all those in poverty. 34% of all those living in poverty live in families with a female head of household and no husband present. that also is 48% of all those family members living in poverty.

Americans in families living in poverty 1960 to 2010. Click on the chart for a larger view.

Americans in families living in poverty 1981 to 2010. Click on the chart for a larget image.

Future pieces in this series will examine poverty in America by race, by citizenship and will also look at wage equity for women.

All charts were prepared from the data in the report by Charles Simmins.

The Census Bureau has released the 2010 report on poverty in America. Follow this site for in depth reports, and lots of charts, on this topic during the next week.

Quick takes on the Census report.

Income equality between women and men is unchanged from 2009, at 77%. Record was set under George Bush in 2008, 77.1%. Median income for single mom households fell 3.3%. Median income for blacks fell 3.2%. Median income in a home with a disabled householder fell 8.5%.

Poverty rate at its highest level since 1993. Since 1965, only one year has been higher, 1983, 15.2%. Those 18-24 registered the biggest increase in poverty from 2009, 21.9%. Poverty declined in areas outside MSA’s (cities and burbs).

Obama’s claim will be that in nearly every year after the end of a recession, poverty rate increased. The 2010 increase is the largest since 1980, and of the eight recessions cited, 3 rates declined (prior to 1980). The number of people in poverty is 33% higher than after any other recession.

5.7 million non-citizens live in poverty, increase of 1.5%. 27% of all non-citizens live in poverty, and they are 15% of all (citizens and non-citizens) living in poverty.

900,000 more ppl did not have health insurance in 2010 than 2009, though the overall percentage was unchanged at 16.3%. 35% of non-citizens have no health insurance. 8% of households making $75k or more are uninsured.

15.9% of population receiving Medicaid, 14.5% Medicare.

Women achieved record wage parity with men four times in the period 2000 to 2009.

Wage parity between men and women in the United States is a matter of law. You cannot discriminate in wages and salaries solely on the basis of sex. Yet, in the many years since that became the law of the land, women’s wages have never reached 100% parity.

There are many reason why that is. We are doing better, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual publication titled Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2009 reveals that progress.

The chart above shows the parity ratio from 2000 to 2009. In those ten years, the ratio set four records. Indeed, it is possible to state that by this measure the Bush years were good for women’s wage parity.

The report may suggest one reason why parity remains just out of reach. The numbers in households headed by a woman with no husband, single parent households, have increased or stayed steady for the last several years for whites and Asians. The same holds true for those same households below the poverty level. Coupled with a solid core of black women lead households in poverty, it would suggest one reason for the stall in wage parity.

Could wage parity in the modern economy be tied to the woman’s ability to have a partner in the household? The number of female headed households in poverty is up 40% in ten years and all such households are up 18%.

The Cen­sus Bureau has released its annual report titled Income, Poverty and Health Insur­ance in the United States: 2009.

Poverty among blacks in America reached record lows during the Clinton Administration and remained at near record lows for most of the Bush Administration. There is a core of poverty among blacks, however, that seems impossible to reach and most of those living within that poverty core are in families headed by single mothers.

The Census Bureau estimates that there were 38.6 million blacks in the United States in 2009. 31.3 million lived in families and of that number, 13.7 million lived in families headed by a single mother. Almost 35.5% of all blacks lived in families headed by a woman with no husband present.

25.8% of all blacks lived in poverty. For those living in families, the percentage was lower, 24.4%. For those living in households headed by a woman with no husband present, 39.7% lived in poverty.

The lowest poverty rate for blacks was in 2000, at 22.5%. Black families also reached a historically low poverty rate that year at 21.2%. In the category Families with Female Householder – No Husband Present, the lowest poverty rate was in 2001, at 37.4%.

The core of black poverty in America is the 5 million plus who live in families headed by a woman. 14% of all blacks in America live in poverty in households headed by a woman.

The data and graphs derived from the data are from the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual publication titled Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2009.

The Census Bureau reports that 43.6 million Americans lived in poverty in 2009. 31.2 million were in a family, and of that number 14.7 million were in households headed by a single woman.

The total United States population for 2009 was an estimated 303,820,000 people. The Census Bureau estimated that 21,573,000 people were not United States citizens and of that number, 5,425,00 lived in poverty. Just over 12% of those living in poverty in America in 2009 were not citizens while just over 7% of the total population were not.

About 59% of non-citizens, according to the Census Bureau, were Hispanic. 71% of the non-citizens living in poverty in the United States in 2009 were Hispanic.

One of the issues with this report concerns the matter of race. I have chosen to use the White – non Hispanic and Black alone numbers for the graphs. Hispanic is defined in the report as all races. It is somewhat apparent that racial definitions are fluid, and the historical data reflects changes over the last decade.