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Sheldon Danziger: Every fall the Census Bureau releases the official data on poverty and
incomes for the previous year. So this year we are expecting poverty to increase perhaps
to as high as 15.5%. Poverty reached 15% in the recession in the early 1980s and the early
1990s, but hasn’t been at 15.5% since the late 1960s or early 1970s.
Poverty is high because unemployment in 2011 was above 8% in every month and some parts
of the Stimulus Bill began to expire in 2011. Poverty would have been even higher had the
Stimulus Bill not continued to provide extended unemployment insurance benefits to millions
of workers in 2011.
Now, those go away in 2012, and so poverty is likely to continue to increase unless Congress
does more to promote the creation of jobs, either in the public or private sectors.
Poverty is likely to remain high for several years, even if the unemployment rate starts
to slowly decline, because we live in a world in which a rising tide no longer lifts all
boats. So we need to have explicit government policies to raise the employment and earnings
of low wage workers who continue to have difficulty earning above poverty incomes in the kind
of economy we have.