“The tragedy here is that they’re all too well aware that this isn’t good. So, what you see is children who know this isn’t the way it should be, but have no way of changing it for themselves.” — Jezza Neumann, filmmaker
The minimum wage is now about more than 40 percent below the federal poverty line.
via Paul Solman and Oregon State’s “Minimum Wage History”.
(PHOTO: A waitress carries a pizza to customers at Gino’s East restaurant in Chicago. Wait staff in Illinois earn $2.13 an hour, before tips. Photo by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images.)
Our understanding of what poverty looks like in the United States is changing as distant suburbs and many rural areas saw much steeper jumps in poverty than big cities, Patchwork Nation writes.
Since 1980, seven of the 12 county types in Patchwork Nation have seen their median family incomes fall in inflation-adjusted dollars. The map above shows the changes by county.
Patchwork Nation has noted, the recession has just exacerbated longer-term rises in economic inequality.
Median household income change after recessions
(Graphic by Justin Myers)
The number of Americans living in poverty reached a 52-year high in 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday. More
