EconomyHuman RightsNorth America

‘Poverty rates rose all over US in 2010’

Poverty rates all over the US have risen with the two states of Mississippi and New Mexico suffering most in 2010, released census data indicate.

Mississippi’s poverty rate has been the highest, at 22.4 percent, followed by New Mexico’s at 20.4 percent, meaning that one out of five in the two states lived below poverty line, Reuters reported on Thursday.

The facts of the study also show that the deep poverty levels in the District of Columbia, and the Washington DC metropolitan area had the lowest poverty rate in the US, at 8.4 percent, reportedly due to its wealthier suburbs. Honolulu had the second lowest, at 9.1 percent.

According to the census, the percentage of people living below poverty line rose in 32 states between 2009 and 2010, meaning more than 46-million of about 312,467,000 Americans lived in poverty last year, the census said.

“No state had a statistically significant decline in either the number of people in poverty or the poverty rate between 2009 and 2010,” the census reported.

The US recession began in 2007. More than a year after the recession officially ended in 2009, the US unemployment rate remains above 9 percent, and the poverty rate rose to 15.3 percent in 2010 from 14.3 percent in 2009.

The “incredibly unequal top-down distribution of wealth” in the US has formed an elite group who controls most aspects of the country’s affluence, according to analysts.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement emerged on September 17 in the financial district of New York City to protest at a number of issues including the wars in the Middle East, US financial crisis, rising poverty, soaring unemployment, and high bonuses for Wall Street executives. Thousands of people all over the US have been protesting against President Barack Obama administration policy with over 2,000 having been arrested.

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