U.S. poverty rate rises to 14.3 percent last year

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- U.S. poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent in 2009, the highest level since 1994, as households' incomes were squeezed by the deepest recession since the 1930s and high unemployment, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday.
The report, formally known as "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States," showed that about 43.6 million people, or 1 in 7, were in poverty last year. That's up from 39.8 million, or 13.2 percent, in 2008.
The rise in poverty rate was not unexpected, as the world's largest economy is still struggling to recover from the recession which began in December 2007.
With hundreds of billions of dollars of fiscal stimulus injected to the economy and a host of unconventional monetary facilities mobilized by the Federal Reserve, the U.S. economy returned to growth in the second half of last year, even though the pace of the recovery has slowed down in recent months.
The unemployment rate jumped from 7.7 percent at the beginning of 2009 to 10.1 percent by October, and remained around 10 percent for the rest of the year.
"The Census Bureau released data that illustrates just how tough 2009 was: along with rising unemployment, incomes failed to rise for the typical household," U.S. President Barack Obama said in a statement.
"Our economy plunged into recession almost three years ago on the heels of a financial meltdown and a rapid decline in housing prices. Last year we saw the depths of the recession, including historic losses in employment not witnessed since the Great Depression," he said.