While government statistics offer some useful insight into jobs, employment and poverty, they also miss a lot, and can underestimate poverty and unemployment levels.
"It's important that people know that we depend on the census for our resources, for our representation, for our voices to be heard and to be counted."
Jeannette Wicks-Lim
Dollars & Sense May/June Issue
The 2011 official poverty rate is 15.1%. The new poverty measure presented—and missed by a wide margin—the opportunity to bring into public view how widespread the problem of poverty is for American families. If what we mean by poverty is the inability to meet one’s basic needs a more reasonable poverty line would tell us that 34% of Americans—more than one in three—are poor.
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