The new Census Bureau numbers come out tomorrow, tracking, among other things, the growth or contraction in the population of Americans who live without insurance or find themselves below the poverty line. This release will be a particularly important one because it's the first year of a recession, which means we can compare those numbers to the first year of the last recession -- 2001, for those keeping track -- and see whether the economy has strengthened or weakened over the course of a full economic cycle. If the percentage in poverty or uninsured has contracted, that means the economy is getting stronger over the time, and the highs are gaining grounds against the lows. If the uninsured and impoverished population has increased, it'll be the opposite, and we'll know the economy has actually backslid. CBPP has more, and we'll all know more tomorrow.
