On Sept. 16, the Census Bureau released its 2009 poverty data revealing that more than one in five children in America lived in poverty last year.

When the government released new U.S. Census data on poverty last week, our warp-speed news cycle paid too little attention to what these numbers tell us — and what the government could do to tackle this moral, economic and political crisis.

There are two age groups that have been particularly devastated by the deep and ongoing unemployment crisis in America: Young people who can’t get their first job, and old people who fear they’ve had their last.

This report from U.S. PIRG and Families USA outlines what young people gain under the new federal health law and actions they can take to protect their rights against insurance companies. It outlines basic information young people should know about health insurance and resources for getting more information.

The announcement today from the Oregon Department of Education that the number of children experiencing homelessness in our public schools has risen another 5.5% to a record 19,040 is an indication of a growing moral crisis in our state.

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) today addressed poverty advocates during the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) and the Half in Ten Campaign’s webinar on poverty data released last Thursday by the Census Bureau. The data revealed that more than 15 million children, or more than one in five kids, lived in poverty in 2009.

This week is National Unmarried and Single Americans Week, and while it is important to celebrate the contributions unmarried women make, we also need to recognize the struggles they face. The National Board of Economic Research may have declared the Great Recession over, but we are far from done feeling its effects.

In any athletic contest, winning teams play their own game and force the other side to play that game too. The same being true in elections, it’s remarkable how timidity leads Democrats to fight this year’s campaign on Republican terms.

Last week the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the poverty rate rose from 13.2 percent in 2008 to 14.3 percent in 2009 - meaning that one in seven Americans are now poor.

That’s the highest number of Americans living in poverty since the 1960s. Rising poverty, which is largely the result of the Great Recession, hasn’t spared any racial and ethnic groups

Esta semana la Oficina del Censo publicó datos sobre la pobreza e ingresos del 2009, los cuales revelan que el año pasado 3.7 millones de personas adicionales se ubicaron bajo los niveles de pobreza, alcanzando un total de 43.6 millones, la cifra más alta desde que el Censo comenzó a publicar dichos datos desde 1959.