“It's really bad out there,” said Timothy Smeeding, director of the UW–Madison Institute for Research on Poverty. “I have never been so depressed. This report is the worst report I’ve seen in 30 years. We’re supposedly a year out of recession and things are still slipping.”
Smeeding—a well-known poverty expert and Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs—is referring to the Census Bureau’s release of the 2010 official poverty statistics [pdf] on September 13, 2011 which showed a significant increase in the poverty rate.
Within minutes of the release, the phones at the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) were ringing off the hook with journalists asking to speak to Smeeding.
The theme of the conversations was the same: times are tough.
Poverty rose from 14.3 percent in 2009 to 15.1 percent—nearly one in six Americans—in 2010, the fourth consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. Since 2007, the poverty rate has risen from 12.5 percent to 15.1 percent—an increase of 2.6 percentage points. Meanwhile, real median income declined by 2.3 percent from 2009 to 2010.
The child poverty rate is even worse: the rate increased for children from 20.7 percent in 2009 to 22.0 percent—approaching one in four children—in 2010. The report also contains many other statistics on income and health insurance coverage in the United States.
But those are numbers—what do they mean for the average American?
Journalists often turn to Smeeding for this type of “real world” perspective because he is known for his compassion for the people behind the numbers, society’s most vulnerable members.
His work and that of his IRP colleagues across the UW campus and around the country informs policy aimed at reducing poverty and social inequality by providing evidence-based proof of what works.
Smeeding noted that the Census numbers would have been even worse without government programs like unemployment benefits.
But he says the real solution to poverty and dwindling incomes is still jobs: “Young, less-educated adults, mainly men, can’t support their children and form stable families because they are jobless.”
In the News:
- "Poor Are Still Getting Poorer, but Downturn's Punch Varies, Census Data Show"The New York Times.
- “Typical U.S. family got poorer over the last 10 years.”USA Today.
- “Poverty numbers climb.”Marketplace [American Public Media radio series] (transcript and audio).
- “Census Bureau tallies bleak toll of Great Recession.”Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
- “Soaring poverty casts spotlight on ‘Lost Decade.’”The New York Times.