Reported Poverty Figures Questioned

UPDATE: Hold on just one second. The widely-cited "1-in-2" figure that a number of media outlets reported Thursday -- including the Associated Press (and, of course, us by extension) -- may not be accurate.

At least according to an NBC News affiliate in Los Angeles, which says it double checked the number with a trio of Census analysts who say that the actual figure for how many Americans are officially classified as either low income or impoverished is closer to 1 in 3.

NBC-LA explains that despite reports to the contrary, the Census officials tell them that the true figures are as follows: about 49.9 million Americans, roughly 13.8 percent of the U.S. population, are living below the poverty line and another 53.8 million, or about 18 percent, are considered low income. 

49.9 million + 53.8 million = 103.7 million, or roughly 32 percent of the U.S. population. That's still a pretty substantial chunk of the U.S. population, but not quite the "nearly half" that made its way into headlines around the Web and onto TV broadcasts.

It's not exactly clear where the mistake came from -- or, for that matter if the original reports got their math wrong -- but the Census officials speculated to the NBC station that it was a case of reporters misunderstanding the data. They say that the study they released was actually meant to show the percentage of American households in neighborhoods where more than 20 percent of the population were in poverty. 

Thursday, Dec. 15: New census data gives some confirmation to the notion of a disappearing middle class: Nearly 1 in 2 Americans are now officially either low income or impoverished, the Associated Press reports.

Based on some new designations the Census Bureau created to better reflect the distribution of poverty in the US, the AP explains that 97.3 million Americans are "low income," which means earning at or just over the poverty line. Added to the 49.1 million Americans living in poverty, that’s 146.4 million, or about 48 percent, of the U.S. population. The new account of poverty in the U.S. considers medical, taxes and transportation costs.

The "low income" cut off for a family of four is $45,000, a number more and more middle-class Americans are dipping – and staying – below. That's is putting an increase on requests for assistance, and not all those needs are being met, the AP reports. According to a survey of mayors in 29 cities, 1 in 4 residents requesting food assistance are not getting it. 

Here’s more on the new picture of poverty in the US:

• The South and the South West have the highest concentration of low-income families, while California and Texas each have more than 1 million residents qualifying.
• Children (at 57%) and seniors are the most likely to be poor or low-income
• Hispanics are the most likely to be poor by race and ethnicity, at 73 percent.  That’s followed by, in order, by African Americans, Asians and non-Hispanic whites.
• The share of working families who are now considered to be low income has risen to 31 percent since the start of the recession in 2007. That’s the highest it’s been in at least a decade. 

And wages, with inflation taken into account, are stagnant or falling for the poorest Americans, while rising for the richest. The AP with the details:

The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000, and earnings for the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000. In contrast, higher-income brackets had significant wage growth since 1979, with earnings for the top 5 percent of families climbing 64 percent to more than $313,000.