Poverty Rate Rises to 12.7 Percent
By JENNIFER C. KERR
The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 30, 2005; 11:10 AM
WASHINGTON -- The nation's poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year, the fourth consecutive annual increase, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
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The last decline in overall poverty was in 2000, when 31.1 million people lived under the threshold _ 11.3 percent of the population.
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"I guess what happened last year was kind of similar to what happened in the early 1990s where you had a recession that was officially over and then you had several years after that of rising poverty," Nelson said. "... These numbers do reflect changes between 2003 and 2004. They don't reflect any improvements in the economy in 2005."
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"The good news is that poverty is a lot lower than it was in 1993, but we went through a hell of an economic boom," Danziger said. "Nobody is predicting we're going to go through another economic boom like that."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083000613.html