4 in 5 in US face near-poverty, no work

he statistics on poverty in America are getting more alarming than ever. Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives.

According to The Associated Press, the trend has been attributed to “an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs.”

The number of Americans living in poverty has spiked to levels unseen since 1960s, classifying 20 per cent of the country’s children as poor. According to an estimate by feedingamerica.org “hunger in America exists for over 50 million people” representing 1 in 6 of the country’s population.

Based on some estimates such as one by moneynews.com nearly 40 million more Americans are only staying out of poverty with the help of programs such as Social Security, food stamps, and the earned-income tax credit. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, without these programs in place, the poverty rate would nearly double.

According to some estimates a staggering number of Americans, over 146 millions, are either “poor” or “low income”.

Based on an analysis by The Huffington Post “Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans – nearly 1 in 2 – have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income … About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That’s up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure.”

But what does future hold for Americans? Is poverty going to be a fringe event? The AP paints a bleak picture if the existing current is not interrupted. “By 2030, based on the current trend of widening income inequality, close to 85 percent of all working-age adults in the U.S. will experience bouts of economic insecurity.”