The poor have rapidly gotten poorer

Poor Are Still Getting Poorer, but Downturn’s Punch Varies, Census Data Show by Jason DeParle and Sabrina Tavernise. Support for the proposition that the capacity to accumulate wealth through surplus production is the necesary predicate to survival. Those with the lowest produuctivity are the most exposed to derailment when exogenous shocks occur.

The discouraging numbers spilling from the Census Bureau’s poverty report this week were a disquieting reminder that a weak economy continues to spread broad and deep pain.

The Midwest is battered, but the Northeast escaped with a lighter knock. The incomes of young adults have plunged — but those of older Americans have actually risen. On the whole, immigrants have weathered the storm a bit better than people born here. In rural areas, poverty remained unchanged last year, while in suburbs it reached the highest level since 1967, when the Census Bureau first tracked it.

Yet one old problem has not changed: the poor have rapidly gotten poorer.