2010 Census
Disabled, Poor Workers Earning Less and Less
According to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau, poverty rates are soaring in the United States as the poorest workers and disabled workers are experiencing some of the greatest declines in income in recent years.
The report released this week—Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010—says that the bottom 10 percent of income earners in this country have seen their income decline by 12.1 percent in recent years, while the top 10 percent have experienced a decline of 1.5 percent in the same time frame. Households headed by a person with a disability saw their income decline by 8.5 percent in the last year.
In California, the state’s poverty rate is at its highest levels in more than a decade, with more than 16 percent of Californians (roughly 6 million people) earning less than the poverty level of $22,000 for a family of four. Household incomes in the state have dropped 5 percent in the last year alone, which is 2.5 times the national average and represents the largest decline since the U.S. Census Bureau began keeping such records.
Broken down along ethnic lines, the national poverty rate for Hispanics in 2010 rose to 26.6 percent and for blacks the poverty rate grew to 27.4 percent—both increases of more than 1 percent. For whites, the poverty rate increased by a half percentage point to 9.9 percent and for Asian Americans the figure below the poverty line remains unchanged at 12.1 percent.
Across the country a record numbers of women are also now living in poverty, that figure rising from 13.9 percent in 2009 to 14.5 percent in 2010, translating to more than 17 million women.
“We see the faces behind these numbers every day,” said Elizabeth Kristen, Director of the Gender Equity Program at the Legal Aid Society–Employment Law Center. “More and more people are coming to us through our Workers’ Rights Clinics and our Helplines looking for help. We are constantly speaking with workers who are trying desperately to hang on to their living situations, pay their bills, feed their families, and avoid slipping into homelessness. This report just confirms that trend.”
Claudia Center, Director of the Disability Rights Program at the LAS–ELC noted that these numbers illustrate the importance of the new Workers’ Rights Disability Law Clinic at the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley. “This clinic will be focused specifically on protecting the jobs and the workplace rights for people with disabilities. And this latest report shows how critical that need really is.”