Interesting. They use eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch as a proxy for measuring poverty, but since they're using it consistently over time, it's a reasonable measure. The linked article says that the percentage of schoolchildren from poor households has grown steadily from about 32% in 1989 to about 42% in 2006 to about 48% in 2011 to about 51% today. The recession started in the last quarter of 2008 but jobs started coming back in 2010 and the unemployment rate has steadily declined since then. I guess that not all the jobs that are "coming back" are really coming back. Many of those old jobs have moved overseas. Of course, my stocks are improving for about seven quarters in a row, and our household income has been increasing for several years, so I suppose you could argue that this isn't affecting everyone, at least not directly. That makes it easy to ignore.
The article makes mention of growing income inequality. I have mentioned on this forum for several years that this is becoming a major problem. Something like 25% of us are going to be fine. We weather the storms; we're connected; we know how to work the system; we know our children will be okay. The majority--and now a real majority according to this report--may not be fine. 160 million out of 300 million grown up scrapping on the other side of the digital divide will be a real problem for all of us, at least in the long run. What's to be done? Neither Obama nor the current congress has the balls to address this. Will we continue to ignore the problem of widespread income inequality?
