Casualties of the War on Poverty

Newspapers around the world recently carried
a news item that seems to be a damning
indictment of the U.S. government and the
American people. The 2005 U.S. Census indicates that the percentage of poor Americans living in “severe” poverty was at a 32-year high. This put the proportion of poor people in deep poverty at 43 percent of the total of 37 million.

As such, the number of severely poor Americans
grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005, so that 16 million Americans were living in deep, or severe,
poverty. This is defined as a family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903, or onehalf the federal poverty line.