According to a new analysis of the 2005 Census Data, the number of severely poor Americans shot up by 26 percent between 2000 and 2005, growing 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population did during the same period. That's worrisome: we're not just seeing an increase in poverty, we're seeing an increase in severe poverty, to the highest rate since 1975. And this is all coming at the tail end of a fairly robust -- at least if you believe the macroeconomic numbers -- expansionary period.
Indeed, this has been the first expansion in which poverty has increased in every successive year (I haven't seen the data for 2006 yet). That's a fairly remarkable trend, and a real break with how our economy traditionally worked. Periods of growth used to aid every element of society, but we've become so unequal that even multiyear expansions will peter out before they reach the bottom segments of society. Meanwhile, the Luxembourg Income Study found that America has the highest child poverty rate of any of the 31 developed nations studied. As the wise Ms. Goodrich says, "that is one international competition the U.S. probably doesn't want to win." If only we weren't so damn competitive.
