Census Bureau and Census Data

For more about state poverty and wage numbers, please go to our overview page on the state-by-state 2010 Census data.

NWLC’s calculations of just released state-by-state Census poverty data reveal more grim news about the hard times facing America’s women and families.

In 2010 roughly half of female-headed families with children were poor in Mississippi (51.2 percent), Alabama (49.3 percent), West Virginia (48.7 percent) and Kentucky (48.5 percent), and in five more states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Ohio, and South Carolina), their poverty rates topped 45 percent.   Read more »

This morning, President Obama released a deficit reduction plan that calls for $1.5 trillion in new revenues from the country’s richest individuals and corporations. Thankfully President Obama recognizes that we can’t let millionaires and billionaires enjoy tax breaks that make our deficit larger and put the burden of debt on the most vulnerable Americans. Read more »

The release of new poverty data this week naturally leads us to focus on the bad news: 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, including 17.2 million women and 16.4 million children; record numbers of women and families living in extreme poverty (i.e., below half the poverty line, which is just $11,157 for a family of four); and the highest income gap ever recorded between those in the bottom tenth and those in the top tenth. But the new data also offers an opportunity to reflect on the positive impact that the safety net has had: Social Security alone prevented 20.3 million more people (including 1.1 million children) from falling into poverty last year. Read more »

NWLC has been crunching numbers all week long on the newly released poverty data for 2010. Our full report on the numbers was released today. The poverty data provides us with a sobering reminder of the real economic hardship felt by families throughout the country and the urgent need for action to create jobs now. Read more »

On Tuesday, the US Census Bureau released new data on health coverage in the US and the numbers were not encouraging. The data showed an increase in the number of women lacking health insurance, bringing the number of uninsured women to the highest level in over a decade. Not surprisingly in this economy, fewer women had employer based insurance coverage and public programs like Medicaid were not able to make up for the coverage lost in the private sector. NWLC’s analysis shows that for women ages 18 to 64: Read more »