The U.S. Census Bureau puts the number of Americans in poverty at levels not seen since the mid-1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the federal government’s so-called War on Poverty.
As President Barack Obama began his second term in January, nearly 50 million Americans — one in six — were living below the income line that defines poverty, according to the bureau. A family of four that earns less than $23,021 a year is listed as living in poverty. The bureau said 20 percent of the country’s children are poor.
The rise in poverty levels come at a time when the $85 billion in federal government spending cuts, also known as the sequester, automatically kicked in on March 1, after Democrats and Republicans were unable to agree on a plan for addressing the national deficit. Many fear that when the cuts fully take effect and programs like Head Start are cut, poverty will deepen and increase, even as the U.S. struggles to recover from the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.
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