Concern over rising US poverty figures-India News Times provides India-centric and other News and Features

Washington: The number of Americans living in poverty stayed at a record high last year, while the median household income fell for a second straight year, the Census Bureau has disclosed. The Census Bureau statistics released its latest report on how Americans live and found that in all, 46.2 per cent Americans lived in poverty as was in 2010. According to Politico, the bureau found that poverty in the US, however, fell from 15.1 percent to 15 percent, amid continued population growth. That comes after more than one million more Americans fell below the poverty line in 2010 and as experts anticipated that the data for 2011 would show an even greater percentage of Americans below that line. The bureau also found that Americans' median household income fell 1.5 percent to 50,053 dollars last year, which is 8.1 percent lower than it was before the start of the recession, and even lower than it was in the late 1990s, the report said. Campaigning in Florida , Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney used the new data to attack the Obama administration's handling of the economy. Obama is ‘the candidate who pushed the middle class into poverty and is crushing the middle class,’ Romney said, adding that Republicans are ‘not the party of the rich, we’re the party of people who want to get rich’. “One in six Americans is now living in poverty. When he came to office there were 32 million people living on food stamps.... Today there are 47 million, 15 million more," he said, adding: “This is a president who was unable to help the very people he said he wants to champion.” According to the report, White House deputy press secretary Amy Brundage said the report "shows that while we have made progress digging our way out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, too many families are still struggling and Congress must act on the policies President Obama has put forward to strengthen the middle class and those trying to get into it."

American poverty figures more and more disappointing