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Nationally, the government reported last month that 14.3 percent of people in the U.S., or 1 in 7, now live below the poverty line, which is $21,954 for a family of four. Among the working-age population, poverty is at 12.9 percent, the highest since the 1960s, when the government launched a national war on poverty. Based on unemployment rates that remain near 10 percent, many analysts predict increases in the U.S. poverty rate for at least two more years, with the suburbs continuing to post large gains. Additional findings: Poor people's requests to nonprofit groups for help buying food, paying bills and making housing payments generally jumped 30 percent between 2008 and 2009. About 3 out of 4 nonprofit groups reported increases in requests from people who had never sought help before. Almost half of the nonprofit groups serving the suburban poor reported they had lost substantial government or private-sector aid in the last year. Many of them were expecting additional cuts in 2011. Suburban nonprofit groups were often spread across multiple counties, cities or townships. That made it difficult to coordinate services across sprawling areas or obtain funding, compared to cities where poverty was more concentrated. Private philanthropic support for nonprofit social service groups more often targeted the poor in cities rather than suburbs, due partly to a belief that cities had the most poor and needed more help.
Elizabeth Kneebone, a senior research associate at Brookings, said the numbers highlighted a need for local governments to develop regional approaches to tackling poverty that encompass both city and suburb. While suburban poverty is a growing problem, Kneebone noted that city poverty also rose significantly in the last year as the downturn began to spread from construction and manufacturing to other sectors of the economy. She said future poverty increases will be partly determined by the pace of economic recovery as well as government policy decisions promoting job growth, affordable housing and transportation.
[Associated
Press;
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