Poorest Still Suffering from the Last Recession

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Many of the poorest people in the United States are still struggling to recover from the effects of a recession that ended six years ago, making them very vulnerable as the country stands on the brink of a new downturn.

In 2006, the latest year for which Census Bureau figures are available, 12.3 percent of Americans were living in poverty, compared with 11.7 percent in 2001, the year of the last recession.

“It’s unusual in an economic recovery that … we still have poverty higher than it was in the recession that preceded it,” said Sharon Parrott, a policy analyst for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank in Washington.

This shows the poor have largely missed out on the gains made when the economy was expanding, Parrott said. The recent expansion was “much stronger for the people at the top than for people at the bottom.”

Few places illustrate this more readily than Philadelphia. For the full story follow this link to Yahoo News.