If You Don't Work, You Can't Eat: Study Finds Poverty Worsens

There are more Americans living in poverty today than there are total people living in the state of California, the most populous state in the nation. The number of poor Americans has grown by five million in the past six years, while inequality has reached historically high levels. In 2005, the richest one percent of Americans had the largest share of the nation's income -- 19 percent -- since 1929, while the poorest 20 percent of Americans had only 3.4 percent of the nation's income. Though the number of Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily in the past three decades, a study by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that since 2000, "the number of severely poor has grown 'more than any other segment of the population.'" In 2005, 16 million people -- 5.4 percent of all Americans -- had incomes below half the poverty line. The number of Americans living in such extreme poverty grew by over three million between 2000 and 2005, and the share of poor people living in extreme poverty is now greater than at any point in the last 32 years. Without urgent action, these numbers are on course to continue growing. The federal minimum wage has remained static for nearly a decade. At $5.15 an hour, it is at its lowest level in real terms since 1956. The federal minimum wage was once 50 percent of the average wage, but is now only 30 percent of that wage. If Congress were to restore the minimum wage to 50 percent of the average wage -- about $8.40 an hour in 2006 -- it would help over 4.5 million poor workers and nearly nine million other low-income workers.  [MORE]