US birth rate plummets

The number of children born in the U.S. has plunged 8 percent since its all-time high in 2007, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. More alarming: population growth is at its slowest growth rate since the Great Depression, according to the U.S. Census....

There's no doubt that birth rate is an indicator of a nation's economic well-being. Typically birth rates are lower in countries with fewer jobs, according to the OECD. 

The birth rate has been falling since the housing bubble burst in 2007. 3.98 million children were born in the 12 months ending in June 2011: 8 percent fewer than the peak of 4.32 million in 2007. Nearly half of that decline has occurred since the end of 2009.

Read it at The Huffington Post
Birth Rate Plummets, Young Americans Too Poor To Have Kids
by Bonnie Kavoussi

Write it off to unforeseen consequence of financial instability.

Growing Number Of Americans Can't Afford Food

Here in the United States, growing numbers of people can't afford that most basic of necessities: food.

More Americans said they struggled to buy food in 2011 than in any year since the financial crisis, according to a recent report from the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit research group. About 18.6 percent of people -- almost one out of every five -- told Gallup pollsters that they couldn't always afford to feed everyone in their family in 2011.

One might assume that number got smaller wrapped up with the national unemployment rate falling for several consecutive months. In actuality, the reverse proved true: the number of people who said they couldn't afford food just kept rising and rising.

The findings from FRAC highlight what many people already know: The economic recovery, in theory now more than two years old, has done little to keep millions of Americans out of poverty and deprivation. Incomes for many haven't kept pace with the cost of living, and for a large swath of the country, things today are as bad as ever, or worse.

Forty-six million people lived below the poverty line as of 2010, a record number, according to the Census Bureau, and one that's not even as high as some other estimates would have it. Take a further step back and the situation appears even more dire. About 45 percent of people in the U.S. have reported not being able to cover their basic living expenses, including food, shelter and transportation, according to the group Wider Opportunities for Women.

The official poverty rate is about 15 percent, but over two-fifths of Americans have so little saved that one financial emergency is all it would take to put them in poverty, according to the Corporation for Enterprise Development.

These high rates of financial insecurity -- a consequence of the weak job market, and the prevalence of jobs that don't pay very well -- are making themselves felt at the level of everyday spending.

Read it at The Huffington Post

Growing Number Of Americans Can't Afford Food

by  Alexander Eichler

Pretty shocking numbers.

Minimum Wage Battle Moves In On Home Health Care

Last year, one of the industry's leading for-profit companies, Home Instead Senior Care, spent at least $362,0000 fighting the Labor Department's proposal, even as it yielded an 18.8 ratio of investment to revenue, USA Today reported. The industry has increased in profitability -- and employment -- since 2006, even as so many other industries shed employees and businesses declared bankruptcy.

 According to MSNBC, privately-owned home health care companies saw a revenue increase of 12.8 percent over the last two years and net profit margins of about 8 percent, while their public counterparts saw revenues rise by 2.5 percent over the same time period, and saw net profit margins of 4 percent.

There are currently around 1.7 million home care workers, according to the National Employment Law Project, a low-wage workers advocacy group. In 2009, those who worked 40 hours per week in the industry earned a little over $20,000 a year -- below the federal poverty line for a family of four.

Read it at The Huffington Post
Minimum Wage Battle Moves In On Home Health Care
by Lila Shapiro

Government assistance for the working poor subsidize firms that pay a wage that is below the poverty line.

It isn't just poverty

Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called “near poor” and sometimes simply overlooked — and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.

Read the whole post at Truthout

Near Poor" Struggling Just Above Poverty Startle the Census

by Jason DeParle, Robert Gebeloff and Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times News Service

A new class in addition to poor — "near-poverty"

Is this the lower middle class under the new normal?