• Medicaid rolls jumped in 2009, By Kevin Sack, September 30, 2010, New York Times: “Joblessness and the accompanying loss of health benefits drove an additional 3.7 million people into the Medicaid program last year, the largest single-year increase since the early days of the government insurance plan, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Enrollment in the program, which provides comprehensive coverage to the low-income uninsured, grew by 8.2 percent from December 2008 to December 2009, the second-largest rate of increase in the 10 years that Kaiser has conducted the survey. There were 48.5 million people on Medicaid at the end of 2009, or about one of every six Americans. Every state showed enrollment growth, with nine above 15 percent and Nevada and Wisconsin above 20 percent…”
• Medicaid enrollment spikes to 48M in weak economy, By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar (AP), September 30, 2010, Washington Post: “A record number of Americans signed up for Medicaid last year, as the recession wiped out jobs and workplace health coverage. A report released Thursday by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that enrollment in the safety-net medical insurance program jumped to more than 48 million - a record 15.7 percent share of the U.S. population. With the economy barely improving, states are forecasting a 6 percent increase in the rolls next year, meaning another strain on their cash-depleted budgets. The Medicaid numbers are the latest piece to emerge in a grim statistical picture of the recession’s toll. The ranks of the working-age poor climbed to the highest level since the 1960s last year, according to a recent Census report. Nearly 12 million households received food stamps, a record…”
• States cutting Medicaid benefits as they stagger under economic downturn, By Phil Galewitz, September 30, 2010, Kaiser Health News: “In Arizona, about 640,000 adult Medicaid recipients will lose coverage tomorrow for podiatry care, insulin pumps and most dental services. In Washington, D.C., in November, doctors who treat 250,000 Medicaid patients are scheduled to see their fees cut 20 percent. These are some of the newest cutbacks in Medicaid as states grapple with surging enrollment — and spending — in the government health insurance program for the poor that covers nearly 49 million Americans. Driven by the economic downturn, enrollment in the state-federal program rose by 8.5 percent in fiscal year 2010, which for most states ended in June, according to study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. State spending on Medicaid jumped an average of 8.8 percent in 2010, the biggest increase in eight years and the second biggest jump in two decades, the study found. The growing costs for Medicaid come as the faltering economy has stripped state tax revenues…”

• Saying no to ‘I do,’ with the economy in mind, By Erik Eckholm, September 28, 2010, New York Times: “The United States crossed an important marital threshold in 2009, with the number of young adults who have never married surpassing, for the first time in more than a century, the number who were married. A long-term decline in marriage accelerated during the severe recession, according to new data from the Census Bureau, with more couples postponing marriage and often choosing to cohabit without tying the knot…”
• D.C., suburbs show disturbing increases in childhood poverty, By Carol Morello and Dan Keating, September 29, 2010, Washington Post: “Three out of 10 children in the nation’s capital were living in poverty last year, with the number of poor African American children rising at a breathtaking rate, according to census statistics released Tuesday. Among black children in the city, childhood poverty shot up to 43 percent, from 36 percent in 2008 and 31 percent in 2007. That was a much sharper increase than the two percentage-point jump, to 36 percent, among poor black children nationwide last year…”
• Census figures in region show poor getting poorer, By Alfred Lubrano and Dylan Purcell, September 29, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “The poor got poorer and the well-off didn’t get any better in the Philadelphia region in 2009, according to U.S. census figures released Tuesday. Philadelphia retained its unwanted position as the poorest among the country’s 10 largest cities, with a poverty rate of 25 percent. Making a bad situation worse, the number of children in poverty under age 18 in the city fell to one in three…”
• Census says recession woes less severe here, By Gary Rotstein, September 29, 2010, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “The economic downturn has not spared the Pittsburgh region, but household data released by the U.S. Census Bureau Tuesday offered additional evidence that the hardships have been less severe than for the nation as a whole. The poverty rate within the seven-county metropolitan area worsened from 12.2 percent in 2008 to 12.3 percent in 2009, according to the American Community Survey, compared with a more drastic change from 13.3 percent to 14.3 percent for the U.S. overall. Pennsylvania had a poverty rate of 12.5 percent last year, compared with 12.3 percent in 2008…”
• Mass. buoyed in recession, data indicate, By Maria Sacchetti, September 29, 2010, Boston Globe: “Massachusetts appeared to weather the recession better than other states last year, according to census figures released yesterday, with stable poverty rates and stagnant annual income. But analysts disagree about whether the figures reflect a strong economy or instead mask more serious troubles statewide…”
• Census shows recession hit broad swath of R.I., By Paul Edward Parker and Paul Davis, September 29, 2010, Providence Journal: “New U.S. Census data show that the deep recession hit Rhode Islanders from all walks of life hard in 2009, as unemployment reached a record high 12.7 percent during the biggest economic slowdown since the Great Depression. More Rhode Island families lived in poverty. More grandparents provided inexpensive childcare for their grandchildren. More workers joined carpools to save money on the daily commute. No groups escaped. Even couples planning families put off the births of their children until better times…”
• In hard times, more Middle TN families share a roof, By Chris Echegaray, September 29, 2010, The Tennessean: “The recession refilled a Brentwood couple’s empty nest - a common effect according to newly released census data. Linda and Carlos Reyes’ two adult children came back home last year because of the poor economy. Their son was moving between his parents’ Brentwood home and Alabama, where his wife had just lost her job as a teacher. The daughter, to save money on gas, often would stay with her parents, and still does…”
• Census snapshot shows bleak picture for many Oklahomans amid recession, By Paul Monies, September 29, 2010, The Oklahoman: “More children had health insurance coverage last year even as the number of adults without coverage remained flat in Oklahoma, according to Census Bureau estimates released Tuesday. Meanwhile, poverty rates increased, and median household income declined last year as Oklahoma continued to feel the effects of a recession that began in late 2007. The share of households on food stamps in the state rose to 12.1 percent last year, up from 10.9 percent in 2008…”
• Number of poor in Tulsa, Oklahoma rises, By Curtis Killman, September 29, 2010, Tulsa World: “The percentage of people living in poverty increased in the state and Tulsa from 2008 to 2009, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Tuesday. Nearly one in five Tulsans reported incomes in 2009 below the poverty level. The estimated 19.5 percent of Tulsans with poverty-level incomes in 2009 reversed a two-year decline in the number of poor in the city, according to Census Bureau statistics…”
• Poverty on rise in Lincoln; researchers say survey may be misleading, By Mark Andersen, September 28, 2010, Lincoln Journal Star: “The number of Lincoln households earning less than $10,000 last year increased 52 percent from 2008, according to census survey data released Tuesday. That jump may mark a dramatic increase in Lincoln poverty, but then again, other dramatic swings in the survey suggest its findings should be regarded with caution…”
• In tough economic times, Coloradans go back to school, census stats show, By David Olinger, September 29, 2010, Denver Post: “In hard times, college enrollment programs can experience great times - particularly those that teach specific job skills. While Colorado residents suffered wage cuts and job losses during a national recession, the number of them paying to go to college grew, according to census survey data released Tuesday. In Denver, enrollment in college and graduate schools jumped by nearly 10,000 students in one year, to about 47,000 citywide, the 2009 American Community Survey estimated. Leading the boom was Community College of Denver, a job-oriented school whose student population nearly doubled in two years…”
• Sacramento area incomes drop 6%, to lowest level in a decade, By Phillip Reese, September 29, 2010, Sacramento Bee: “State worker furloughs, an anemic construction industry and widespread layoffs last year pushed Sacramento-area household incomes to their lowest level in at least a decade, census figures released Tuesday show. The region’s median household income - the figure in the middle of a ranked list of household incomes - was $57,361 during 2009, down 6 percent from 2008, after adjusting for inflation. That’s a bigger fall than the statewide drop of 3 percent…”
• New data offers proof: The recession hurts, By Jeannie Kever, September 28, 2010, Houston Chronicle: “Stop us if you’ve heard this before: Household income is down. Poverty levels are up. People who still have jobs are working fewer hours. Census data released Tuesday confirmed what most Americans already knew. ‘It is very clear how extensive the economic difficulties are,’ said Steve Murdock, the former state demographer who now is on the faculty at Rice University. ‘Health insurance. Job hours worked. Poverty rates. Income. Those are all in the wrong direction in terms of what we’d like to see for America.’ The trends held true at all levels in the 2009 American Community Survey data, which offers a snapshot of the nation’s economic and demographic status. The first results from the 2010 Census will be released later this year…”
• More people living in poverty in Austin, survey finds, By Juan Castillo, September 28, 2010, Austin-American Statesman: “Nearly 1 out of every 5 Austinites lived in poverty in 2009, an increase from the previous year, the U.S. Census Bureau said Tuesday. Among the most striking increases in poverty rates were among Austin’s children. According to figures from the bureau’s American Community Survey, 27 percent of related children under 18 and 31.5 percent of related children under 5 lived in poverty in 2009 - 5 percent and 6 percent increases, respectively, from 2008…”
• 1 in 5 Tampa Bay area kids live in poverty, census says, By Kevin Wiatrowski, September 29, 2010, Tampa Tribune: “The latest government estimates, released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau, show the number of people living in poverty has been growing steadily since 2006 in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Polk counties. Children have been hit the hardest in the Bay area, where about one in five people younger than 18 live in poverty, according to census estimates. Seniors, on the other had, remain insulated from the region’s growing poverty. In the Tampa Bay area, fewer than 10 percent have fallen into poverty, while fewer than 1 percent, on average, lack health insurance, Census figures show…”
• Census snapshot of South Florida: Poverty up, wealth down, By Douglas Hanks, September 29, 2010, Miami Herald: “Housing values crashed. Renting became more popular. Much of the population slipped a rung down the wealth ladder. And Miami seems to be booming. A deluge of Census data released Tuesday crystalized some of the trends under way as South Florida reckons with a wrenching economic downturn, a tepid recovery and a transformed real estate market. One side effect: Thousands of cheap urban condos built during the boom are now attracting renters and bargain hunters. The city of Miami, the center of the nation’s condo building binge, saw its population surge 25 percent this year to about 433,000, according to the numbers…”

• Census shows rising poverty, falling incomes in Madison, Dane County, By Steven Verburg, September 28, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal: “Household income in Dane County and Madison dropped more than twice as much as it did nationally in 2009, and the proportion of rich and poor increased while middle-income households dwindled, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday. The data also showed rising levels of poverty, including among children, in the city and county. Experts said the numbers demonstrate the broad impact of the recent recession - described as the country’s worst since World War II but which officially ended in June 2009…”
• Milwaukee now fourth poorest city in nation, By Bill Glauber and Ben Poston, September 28, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Milwaukee emerged as America’s fourth-most impoverished big city in 2009, as the Great Recession rippled across the city and state, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Tuesday. Milwaukee’s poverty rate reached 27%, up from 23.4% in the previous year. Only Detroit (36.4%), Cleveland (35%) and Buffalo (28.8%) had higher poverty rates among cities with populations greater than 250,000. Milwaukee was ranked 11th in 2008. An estimated 158,245 Milwaukeeans lived in poverty last year. For a family of four with two adults and two children, the poverty threshold was an annual income of $21,954. What’s more, nearly 4 in 10 children in Milwaukee were considered poor, meaning an estimated 62,432 children lived in poverty last year, up from 49,952 in 2008…”
• Poverty rises slightly in Chicago area, By Dahleen Glanton and Lisa Black, September 29, 2010, Chicago Tribune: “Poverty inched higher in the Chicago area in the midst of the recession, pulling city and suburban families that once were considered middle class into the ranks of the poor, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. Like the rest of the country, the Chicago area experienced heavy job losses, home foreclosures and lower median household incomes from 2006 to 2009, which forced some people out of their comfortable lifestyles into homeless shelters, food banks and unemployment lines…”
• Census reveals ‘new poor’ in many Twin Cities suburbs, By Jeremy Olson, September 28, 2010, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “Poverty and joblessness rose sharply in many Twin Cities suburbs last year, according to U.S. census estimates released Tuesday, along with a rise in what advocates call the “new poor” — families whose financial stability has crumbled in the economic recession. In Anoka County, for example, the unemployment rate shot up to 6.8 percent in 2009 from 3.3 percent in 2008. Child poverty in Dakota County more than doubled, to 8.2 percent in 2009, while the rate of uninsured residents increased in Washington County from 5 percent in 2008 to 6.7 percent in 2009…”
• Census survey data: Minnesotans’ incomes took a hit in 2009, By Elizabeth Dunbar, September 28, 2010, Minnesota Public Radio: “Minnesotans’ incomes took a hit and more residents were living in poverty in 2009 as the economic recession continued, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The estimated median household income in Minnesota fell to $55,616 compared to $57,288 in 2008, according to the American Community Survey data, which is calculated from surveys conducted with 2 percent of the U.S. population…”
• Michigan sees sharpest income plunge in nation, By Mike Wilkinson, September 29, 2010, Detroit News: “For most families in Michigan, the long-running recession has meant a simple, unrelenting truth: living with less. And census data released on Tuesday shows how much less — the state’s median household income fell by more than $12,000 over the last decade — the equivalent of trimming $1,000 from a family’s monthly budget. The drop was stunning in both its size and its singularity: No other state came close to losing the estimated 21.3 percent of its median income between 2000 and 2009, and no state endured the 6.5 percent drop seen from 2008 to 2009…”
• Poverty rate jumps locally, By Bill Bush and Rita Price, September 29, 2010, Columbus Dispatch: “About half of all pay in Franklin County last year ended up in households with incomes north of $95,000, while those that made less than $20,000 got just over 3percent of the payout, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released yesterday. The comparison, based on cutting the county into fifths by income and looking at the households in the top and bottom 20 percent, comes amid troubling news about poverty and household incomes. The economic downturn pushed tens of thousands of additional Franklin County residents below the poverty line last year. The percentage of county residents living in poverty shot to 18.2 percent in 2009, from 15 percent the year before…”
• Census shows Cleveland is the second-poorest city in the United States, By Robert L. Smith, September 29, 2010, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Hard times came to every corner of Northeast Ohio during a historic recession, as unemployment and its consequences rippled across the city and suburbs. The hammer of despair landed hardest in Cleveland, where one out of every three people lived in poverty at the end of 2009, making Cleveland the second-poorest big city in America — thank you, Detroit — according to estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The region weathered the Great Recession better than some other metro areas, but poverty rose in every outlying county except Medina, and many felt the pangs of hunger and fear for the first time…”

Stimulus-subsidized jobs in jeopardy, By Alexandra Zavis and Rong-Gong Lin II, September 29, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Michael Beightol has 12 years of retail experience, but that was no help when he was looking for a job earlier this year. ‘I must have put in 1,000 applications or more, and no one was hiring because of the economy,’ said the 34-year-old Covina resident, who is raising an 8-year-old daughter on his own. His luck changed when Los Angeles County offered to pay his salary at Americal Contractors Corp., a small, veteran-owned painting firm in Pomona that is teaching him a new career as an estimator. ‘I’m so happy that they had this program, because I feel like I am being a productive part of society instead of sitting at home doing nothing,’ Beightol said. Using funding from last year’s $787-billion stimulus bill, California counties have put to work more than 35,000 people by subsidizing their employment for up to a year, according to figures from July. Many of those jobs are now in jeopardy unless Congress extends the funding beyond Thursday, the end of the fiscal year…”

Haiti still waiting for pledged US aid, By Jonathan M. Katz and Martha Mendoza (AP), September 29, 2010, National Public Radio: “Nearly nine months after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on the streets between piles of rubble. One reason: Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived. The money was pledged by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in March for use this year in rebuilding. The U.S. has already spent more than $1.1 billion on post-quake relief, but without long-term funds, the reconstruction of the wrecked capital cannot begin. With just a week to go before fiscal 2010 ends, the money is still tied up in Washington. At fault: bureaucracy, disorganization and a lack of urgency, The Associated Press learned in interviews with officials in the State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the White House and the U.N. Office of the Special Envoy. One senator has held up a key authorization bill because of a $5 million provision he says will be wasteful. Meanwhile, deaths in Port-au-Prince are mounting, as quake survivors scramble to live without shelter or food…”

• Census Bureau to release flood of numbers in coming weeks, By Ed O’Keefe, September 29, 2010, Washington Post: “In the coming weeks, Americans will be swimming in statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Remember, the Census Bureau doesn’t just tabulate the nation’s population every decade; it also compiles important economic, employment, educational and demographic statistics that are used for determining such things as the allocation of federal funding, where to build new roads and how to market new products…”
• Census finds record gap between rich and poor, By Hope Yen (AP), September 28, 2010, Detroit Free Press: “The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession. The top-earning 20% of Americans - those making more than $100,000 each year - received 49.4% of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4% earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly released census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968. A different measure, the international Gini index, found U.S. income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations. At the top, the wealthiest 5% of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, census data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower. ‘Income inequality is rising, and if we took into account tax data, it would be even more,’ said Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in poverty. ‘More than other countries, we have a very unequal income distribution where compensation goes to the top in a winner-takes-all economy…’”
• Census: Recession affects all aspects of American life, By Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, September 28, 2010, USA Today: “The nation’s financial crisis is altering Americans’ way of life from the home and the workplace to the highway and the altar, according to the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey out Tuesday. Median household income fell 2.9% from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 last year. It dropped in 34 states and increased in only one -North Dakota…”
• For many adults, marriage can wait, census shows, By Conor Dougherty, September 28, 2010, Wall Street Journal: “Marriage is so over. For the first time in at least a century, the proportion of U.S. adults between 25 and 34 who have never been married last year exceeded those who are married, marking a reversal that follows years of decline in marriage rates, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. Marriage rates among young adults have been dropping for decades, a decline that accelerated during the 2007-2009 recession that was the longest and deepest since the Great Depression. With stagnant paychecks and a 9.6% unemployment rate, many young adults are delaying marriage until they are better set financially, or forgoing matrimony altogether…”
• Cohabitation numbers jump 13%, linked to job losses, By Sharon Jayson, September 24, 2010, USA Today: “Cohabitation in the USA is at an all-time high, with the number of opposite-sex couples living together rising 13% in a year’s time, from 6.7 million in 2009 to 7.5 million this year. And, it’s likely because of the recession, according to a U.S. Census study out Thursday. It found a direct connection between living together and the cohabiting partners’ employment status…”

• State youth show gains in well-being, By Markeshia Ricks, September 28, 2010, Montgomery Advertiser: “Alabama’s children are show­ing improvements in their safe­ty, health and education, but the annual report on their well-be­ing shows there is still a huge amount of work to be done. The 2010 Alabama Kids Count Data Book, which VOICES for Alabama’s Children released to­day, examines data on issues that impact child well-being such as safety, poverty, teen birth rate and preventable teen death — and most of this data did not reflect well on the Mont­gomery area…”
• Survey: Child well-being improves for state, county, By Dana Beyerle, September 27, 2010, Gadsden Times: “Some but not all of the child well-being indicators for Alabama and Etowah County are better than they have been in recent years, the latest Kids Count survey released by Voices for Alabama Children shows. ‘We are making progress in child well-being,’ Linda Tilly, executive director of Voices for Alabama’s Children, said Monday. ‘We’d like to see more, but sometimes economic realities prevent it.’ The 2010 Alabama Kids Count survey, online at www.alavoices.org, provides state and county data that measure child well-being over time. They include school participation and family health issues…”

Voucher program for chronically homeless loses funding, By Jessica Anderson, September 25, 2010, Baltimore Sun: “Joseph Hill proudly shows off his new home - a one-bedroom McCulloh Street apartment that is his first stable housing in 15 years. Hill, 45, who had been homeless for a third of his life, now has a place to display his collection of battered family photos and the certificates of progress marking the two years he’s been clean of drugs. But city officials and homeless advocates who hoped to duplicate Hill’s success have run into problems. Money for a voucher program that is paying the rent for Hill and nearly 400 other formerly homeless city residents has dried up. While those already enrolled in the Housing Choice Voucher program administered by the city’s Housing Authority will continue to receive benefits, the initiative is closed to new applicants…”

Wage laws squeeze South Africa’s poor, By Celia W. Dugger, September 26, 2010, New York Times: “The sheriff arrived at the factory here to shut it down, part of a national enforcement drive against clothing manufacturers who violate the minimum wage. But women working on the factory floor - the supposed beneficiaries of the crackdown - clambered atop cutting tables and ironing boards to raise anguished cries against it. ‘Why? Why?’ shouted Nokuthula Masango, 25, after the authorities carted away bolts of gaily colored fabric. She made just $36 a week, $21 less than the minimum wage, but needed the meager pay to help support a large extended family that includes her five unemployed siblings and their children. The women’s spontaneous protest is just one sign of how acute South Africa’s long-running unemployment crisis has become. With their own industry in ruinous decline, the victim of low-wage competition from China, and too few unskilled jobs being created in South Africa, the women feared being out of work more than getting stuck in poorly paid jobs. In the 16 years since the end of apartheid, South Africa has followed the prescriptions of the West, opening its market-based economy to trade, while keeping inflation and public debt in check. It has won praise for its efforts, and the economy has grown, but not nearly fast enough to end an intractable unemployment crisis…”

Wisconsin’s free health care clinics might emulate Kentucky program, By David Wahlberg, September 27, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal: “In Lena and Ralph Burnette’s modest but tidy home, Pollyanna Gilbert opened a catalog for a store called Dr. Comfort. It was time for the Burnettes, who have diabetes, to order diabetic shoes. Gilbert is a lay health worker with Kentucky Homeplace, a state-funded program that helps people in a region with the worst life expectancy in the country navigate the complicated health care system. Organizers of Wisconsin’s rural free clinics are paying attention to the program, saying they could develop a similar navigator role if the new health care reform law reduces demand for free care…”

Job loss looms as part of stimulus act expires, By Michael Cooper, September 25, 2010, New York Times: “Tens of thousands of people will lose their jobs within weeks unless Congress extends one of the more effective job-creating programs in the $787 billion stimulus act: a $1 billion New Deal-style program that directly paid the salaries of unemployed people so they could get jobs in government, at nonprofit organizations and at many small businesses. In rural Perry County, Tenn., the program helped pay for roughly 400 new jobs in the public and private sectors. But in a county of 7,600 people, those jobs had a big impact: they reduced Perry County’s unemployment rate to less than 14 percent this August, from the Depression-like levels of more than 25 percent that it hit last year after its biggest employer, an auto parts factory, moved to Mexico. If the stimulus program ends on schedule next week, Perry County officials said, an estimated 300 people there will lose their jobs - the equivalent of another factory closing…”

Some Obama allies fear school lunch bill could rob food stamp program, By Robert Pear, September 23, 2010, New York Times: “In her campaign to reduce childhood obesity and improve school nutrition, Michelle Obama has become entangled in a fight with White House allies, including liberal Democrats and advocates for the poor. At issue is how to pay for additional spending on the school lunch program and other child nutrition projects eagerly sought by the White House. A bill that the House is expected to consider within days would come up with some of the money by cutting future food stamp benefits. When the Senate passed the bill in early August, Mrs. Obama said she was thrilled. But anti-hunger groups were not. They deluged House members on Thursday with phone calls and e-mails expressing alarm…”

Number of homeless students in Oregon continues to increase, By Anne Williams, September 23, 2010, Register-Guard: “Oregon public schools continued to see swelling numbers of homeless students in 2009-10, a testament to the reach and tenacity of a stubborn recession. More than three in every 100 students - 19,040 - met the federal definition of homelessness last year, an increase of 5.5 percent over 2008-09, according to a state report released Wednesday. The uptick surprised no one on the front lines of providing services to homeless families. ‘We see how the recession has hit,’ said Janet Beckman, the liaison to homeless families in the Springfield School District, which counted 482 homeless students last year, up from 464 the year before. ‘We know that we’re seeing families we’ve never seen before, that have never been in this type of situation before. There’s been a shift in the type of people who are needing assistance.’ But the increase between the two years wasn’t as large as the previous year’s 14 percent…”

• States are vulnerable to child care fraud, By Raquel Rutledge, September 23, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Government workers across the country are rubber-stamping taxpayer funding for phantom child care arrangements, according to a new report by the federal Government Accountability Office. In an undercover sting operation conducted in recent months, GAO agents were able to receive subsidy payments using fake Social Security numbers, bogus jobs and phony addresses in four of the five states that were spot-checked. All five states were vulnerable to fraud, the report found. ‘Some states didn’t even call our fake employers,’ said Greg Kutz, managing director of forensic audits and special investigations with the GAO. The GAO conducted its sting in Illinois, Michigan, New York, Texas and Washington. The states were selected based in part on the amount of the $2 billion federal stimulus money they received last year…”
• Texas denies it lacks safeguards against child care fraud, By Robert T. Garrett, September 24, 2010, Dallas Morning News: “Texas has few safeguards to catch scam artists posing as struggling parents to get government child care money, congressional investigators have found. Millions of dollars are at risk, according to the investigators, who said that Texas needs to do a better job of verifying applicants’ identities and employment. The Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress, said undercover federal employees managed to get fictitious parents and children admitted to the subsidized child care program in Harris and Fort Bend counties, using the Social Security numbers of dead people. And it said Texas doesn’t adequately verify parents’ employment, check the backgrounds of relative caregivers and flag suspicious applications for further review…”

• For many, health care relief begins today, By Kevin Sack, September 22, 2010, New York Times: “Sometimes lost in the partisan clamor about the new health care law is the profound relief it is expected to bring to hundreds of thousands of Americans who have been stricken first by disease and then by a Darwinian insurance system. On Thursday, the six-month anniversary of the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a number of its most central consumer protections take effect, just in time for the midterm elections. Starting now, insurance companies will no longer be permitted to exclude children because of pre-existing health conditions, which the White House said could enable 72,000 uninsured to gain coverage. Insurers also will be prohibited from imposing lifetime limits on benefits…”
• Some insurers to halt new child-only policies, By N. C. Aizenman, September 21, 2010, Washington Post: “Some of the country’s most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23. The companies will continue to cover children who already have child-only policies. They will also accept children with preexisting conditions in new family policies. Nonetheless, supporters of the new health-care law complain that the change amounts to an end run around one of the most prized consumer protections…”
• New healthcare law kicks in today, By Todd Ackerman, September 23, 2010, Houston Chronicle: “Tens of thousands of Texas children will be directly affected by the 11th-hour decision of a number of major health insurance companies to stop selling child-only policies rather than comply with the new federal law that requires they cover youngsters with pre-existing conditions. All insurance companies starting today will accept children in family plans regardless of medical history, but Texas insurers United Healthcare, Aetna Inc. and Cigna Inc. are among the ones that will no longer offer policies just for individuals under 19. Such plans have grown in popularity in recent years as employee-based policies have cut coverage of dependents…”

• Fewer kids in foster care in Pennsylvania, Allegheny County, By Jill King Greenwood, September 21, 2010, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “A report to be released today finds Pennsylvania is making ’significant progress’ in safely reducing the number of children living in foster care. That number fell almost 12 percent between this year and last, according to the Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group in Harrisburg. ‘Pennsylvania’s child welfare system serves some of the most vulnerable children and families in our communities. It is critically important that we continue to monitor the performance of this essential safety net,’ said Joan L. Benso, president of the partnership. The report compared data collected between April 1, 2009, and March 31 with the previous year, and drew from all 67 counties in the state. The declines are being achieved without endangering children’s safety, the report said, because repeat cases of child abuse did not measurably increase and re-entry into foster care declined…”
• Fostering good care results, By Peter Hall, September 24, 2010, Bucks County Courier Times: “The number of Bucks County children in foster care declined, while the number of children who left foster homes for permanent homes increased last year, according to a report released Tuesday by a child welfare advocacy group. In Montgomery County, the number of children in foster care dropped only slightly and the number of children who found permanent homes stayed level. But indicators of child welfare performance in both Bucks and Montgomery in those and many other areas examined in the report were better than the average for other urban counties or Pennsylvania as a whole…”

Food stamp eligibility expands, By Mary Vorsino, September 23, 2010, Honolulu Star Advertiser: “About 22,000 more Hawaii residents will be eligible for food stamps starting next month, when the state changes the income cut off for the benefits to up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level — the maximum allowed for the program. The change will further boost participation in a program that has seen skyrocketing growth in recent years and now serves more than 10 percent of the state’s population. Under the changes, a family of four could earn up to $50,736 a year and still qualify for food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Now, food stamp recipients can earn up to 130 percent of the poverty level (or $32,976 for a family of four)…”

Unemployment rises in 27 states, By Christopher S. Rugaber (AP), September 21, 2010, Houston Chronicle: “More than half of U.S. states saw their unemployment rates rise in August, the largest number in six months, as hiring weakened across the country. The jobless rate increased in 27 states last month, including Texas, the Labor Department said Tuesday. It fell in 13 and was unchanged in 10 states and Washington, D.C. That’s worse than the previous month, when the rate increased in only 14 states and fell in 18. It’s also the most states to see an increase since February…”

State officials cut $13.5M from Child Care Assistance Service program, By Elizabeth Piazza, September 21, 2010, Farmington Daily Times: “Hundreds of families in San Juan County could find themselves without child care after state officials cut $13.5 million from the Child Care Assistance Service program. Officials from the New Mexico Human Services Department announced that beginning Nov. 1, families who fall above the federal poverty level, which is based on number of people living in a household and income level, will no longer be eligible for state assistance to pay for child care, said Katherine Slater-Huff, department spokeswoman. ‘We are looking at and trying to balance the needs of all participants who receive services from the many TANF-funded programs,’ Slater-Huff said of the department’s decision to cut child care funding. The child care assistance service program is funded by TANF, an acronym for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The child care cuts come as a result of a $28 million shortfall for the TANF program, Slater-Huff said…”

Welfare boss says backlog, errors fall, By Ken Kusmer (AP), Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: “Indiana human services chief Anne Murphy told a legislative panel Tuesday that the face-to-face contact for clients that she has added to the state’s error-plagued welfare automation system is showing success, but lawmakers said many problems remain. Murphy, secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, said error rates are down and the percentage of new applications for food stamps, Medicaid and other benefits on backlog has fallen by 83 percent or more in southwest and west-central Indiana after her agency made the changes in those two regions. ‘Hybrid is what’s driving down this percentage,’ Murphy told the Medicaid Oversight Commission. FSSA rolled out the ‘hybrid’ system to 10 southwest counties in January and 11 west-central counties in June. The agency added 16 more southern counties this month…”

Aging population, spending on health costs boost debt, By Maureen Groppe, September 14, 2010, Newark Advocate: ” It’s not difficult to find someone getting a boost from the federal government. They might be sitting across from you at breakfast. Almost half the country lived in households in which at least one person benefited from a federal social welfare or social insurance program in 2008. Some were helped by programs such as food stamps, for which demand increases when the economy sinks. But the Census Bureau said the programs benefiting the most households were Social Security and Medicare, the retirement and health programs for the elderly. Those programs, along with Medicaid, have grown in 40 years from 19 percent of the budget to 39 percent in 2009, more than doubling their share. Costs are going to keep increasing as more baby boomers retire and health care costs continue to increase…”

Oklahoma lawmakers study fallout of high incarceration rate, Associated Press, September 14, 2010, The Oklahoman: “Oklahoma’s strict criminal sentences, especially for women, create hardships for the children of inmates and perpetuate a cycle that often results in the children behind bars themselves, experts warned lawmakers Tuesday. Several child advocates and a criminal justice expert testified before the House Human Services Committee that Oklahoma’s children are paying the price for the state’s tough-on-crime sentencing policies…”

• Paterson’s no. 2 calls for Medicaid overhaul, By Anemona Hartocollis, September 19, 2010, New York Times: “Describing Medicaid as a ‘massive program’ whose growth threatens the state’s finances, Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch is calling for significant changes in New York’s health care benefits for the poor and disabled, lobbing a volatile issue in the midst of the campaign for a new governor. In a report to be released on Monday, Mr. Ravitch says the state should remove control of the rate-setting process for Medicaid, the joint state and federal health insurance program for the poor, from the Legislature to reduce the influence of politics. He also calls for limits on medical malpractice awards and for the re-examination of rules that allow middle-class families to shelter assets so they can qualify for coverage. Although the report does not suggest a cut in benefits, it notes that New York has among the most liberal definitions of eligibility…”
• State’s Medicaid numbers hit record, By Bill Toland, September 21, 2010, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “More than 2.2 million Pennsylvanians are eligible for Medicaid, the federally mandated, state-managed program that provides health care for people and families who can’t afford care otherwise. It is the highest number on record, representing nearly 18 percent of the population — more than one in six Pennsylvanians — and underscoring the worrisome economic climate and continued difficulty many people have finding jobs and employer-provided insurance. But the swelling Medicaid roster is not just a sign of the economic times. It’s also reflective of growing dependence on state-sponsored health care and safety nets, as well as the increasing cost of health care and long-term care — trends showing few signs of immediate abatement. As a result, the state’s Department of Public Welfare budget, and the need to trim it, have been regular sources of political strife for Gov. Ed Rendell and the state Legislature. The same will remain true for future governors and lawmakers…”

Education Dept. awards grants to 21 distressed communities to plan for ‘Promise Neighborhoods’, By Christine Armario (AP), September 21, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Organizers in distressed communities from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., will soon begin plans to create what the Department of Education envisions as ‘Promise Neighborhoods,’ where children and families receive support services that boost a student’s chance of being successful in school. Twenty-one applicants for the program to transform communities and student outcomes were named on Tuesday. They will receive planning grants of up to $500,000. ‘Communities across the country recognize that education is the one true path out of poverty,’ Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. ‘These Promise Neighborhoods applicants are committed to putting schools at the center of their work to provide comprehensive services for young children and students.’ The program is modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides comprehensive support for families from pregnancy through birth, education through college and career. Children in the program’s charter schools have made impressive gains on standardized tests and in closing the achievement gap…”

Report: Poor countries face education crisis, By Jason Straziuso (AP), September 20, 2010, Washington Post: “Nearly 70 million children around the world are not getting an education despite much progress in the last 10 years, and Haiti and Somalia are the two worst countries in which to be a school-age child, a new report released Monday said. The global financial crisis has forced poor countries to cut their education budgets by $4.6 billion a year at a time when intensified efforts are needed to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of ensuring a primary school education for every child in the world by 2015, it said. The report listed 10 countries at the bottom of the education list, all but Haiti are in Africa. In addition to Somalia, the others are Eritrea, Comoros, Ethiopia, Chad, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Liberia. It based the rankings on access to basic education, teacher-student ratio and educational provisions for girls. Even Kenya, considered successful compared to its East African neighbors, had to delay free education to 9.7 million children over the last year due to budgetary constraints, the report said. The report was produced by Education International, Plan International, Oxfam, Save the Children and VSO…”

U.N. Millennium Development Goals appear out of reach in Africa, By Robyn Dixon, September 13, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Sub-Saharan Africa will not reduce poverty and hunger and improve child and maternal healthcare to meet the goals set a decade ago by the United Nations unless African and Western leaders do much more, several recent reports suggest. The main reasons: Donors have failed to keep pledges and many African nations have not improved their governments or increased health spending as promised. Only a handful of developed countries have met a pledge to increase foreign aid to 0.7% of their gross domestic product, while in some countries aid is declining. And only Rwanda, Tanzania and Liberia have met their pledge to spend 15% of their budgets on health, while in some African nations - Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa and others - the proportion has fallen since 2000, according to a recent report out of Britain. The average spending on healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa remains less than 10% of GDP. The Millennium Development Goals were adopted by about 190 U.N. member countries in 2000 to tackle poverty, hunger, disease and early deaths in poor countries, with a series of targets set for 2015. The struggling efforts to meet those goals will be discussed at a three-day U.N. summit in New York beginning Monday…”

Gains made, but many pregnant mothers still die, By Binaj Gurubacharya (AP), September 17, 2010, Washington Post: “Astamaya Tami, 55, is part of a ragtag army of women who have turned Nepal into an against-all-odds success story when it comes to saving lives of expectant mothers, hundreds of thousands of whom die unnecessarily every year across the globe. She and others pull on their flip-flops and head into the mountains by car or on foot to visit desperately poor villages, some connected only by a single, rocky footpath. They bring vaccines, vitamins and, equally important, advice. ‘At first people were suspicious. They’d scold us, or wouldn’t talk to us at all,’ said Tami, herself a mother of eight, adding that not long ago almost all women were giving birth at home or in filthy, frigid cowsheds. They were helped only by female relatives or untrained midwives cutting umbilical cords with unsterilized knives. ‘But that’s all changed,’ said Tami, smiling proudly and dressed in a red ceremonial sari. Like many developing countries today - especially in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa - this Himalayan nation of 28 million people, plagued by political instability following a decade-long communist insurgency, still faces massive challenges. But it is seen by many as an example of just how much can be achieved through sheer will when it comes to fighting maternal mortality: In the last five years, it has slashed rates in half. That is something 189 heads of state and development agencies well understood a decade ago when they set their Millennium Development Goals of tackling the world’s most serious humanitarian crises in the areas of poverty, disease and lack of education…”

When family fails | A child’s stability, a parent’s rights, By Crocker Stephenson, September 19, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

• How we reported this: “To help people gain a clearer understanding of how the child welfare system works in Milwaukee County, reporter Crocker Stephenson and photojournalist Kristyna Wentz-Graff received unprecedented access to two cases that reveal how the parties involved try to balance child safety with parents’ rights and the goal of a stable home life. The journalists spent more than eight months tracking three families - two mothers seeking to be reunified with their children and a foster couple hoping to adopt a child they have cared for since shortly after her birth…”
• Struggle to reunite families can hurt children: “Brandy remembers that night, in early spring 2009, settling a $5 chunk of crack on the tip of her pipe. The pipe is a metal tube, blackened by frequent use on one end. The other end, which she places to her lips, is wrapped for protection with a torn matchbook cover and a piece of duct tape. She sits at her kitchen table in a public housing complex on the city’s north side. On the table is a black plate. On the plate are two more $5 pieces of crack. The black plate helps Brandy see them: nickel rocks, the size of peas. A fluorescent light hums above her head. Above the sink behind her is a plaster relief of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper.’ Brandy started smoking crack in her late teens. Thought she could control it. Thought it would keep her thin. Now she’s a heavyset 40-year-old addict, a pipe in her right hand, a lighter in her left. She is alone. Two sons - their father uninvolved - in foster care. Another son living with Brandy’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. A daughter living with another father’s relatives. Another daughter, yet another father, grown and with a child of her own…”
• Lives tipped upside down: “Brandy’s vow in the spring of 2009 to regain custody of her two sons would require not only that she quit using drugs but that she also display an ability to keep the boys safe and provide for their well-being. Her most recent attempt at reunification had been a crashing failure. After nearly a year of sobriety, Brandy had been reunited with Tae and Shakiem in November 2006. At the time, Brandy was 39 years old and pregnant with her third son, who would be born in January 2007. In April 2007, Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare caseworker Kelly Smith, believing the boys, after years of moving from foster home to foster home, had successfully found permanency with their mother, filed a request to end bureau services to the reunified family by the year’s end. ‘Brandy recently gave birth to a healthy baby boy and the new addition and transition has been successful,’ Smith noted in the boys’ court files. In truth, Brandy was barely holding on…”
• Motherhood put to the test: “It is early spring 2010. In a few minutes, Tae and Shakiem will arrive for an extended unsupervised visit with their mother.  They will be with Brandy for a week. She says she is exhausted already. A drug addict for more than two decades, Brandy has been clean for about a year - since March 2009 - but lately, night after night, she says, she dreams she is using again. ‘Nightmares,’ she says. Brandy’s sons - Tae is 12 and Shakiem is 10 - are among the more than 2,000 Milwaukee County children who, because of abuse or neglect, have been removed from their families and placed in out-of-home care by the state-run Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare. The brothers have been in and out of foster care for most of their lives and have moved from one home to another more than a dozen times. The bureau is moving Tae and Shakiem toward reunification with their mom. They’ve been reunified with their mother before. Twice. Both times, the reunification failed. ‘Insanity,’ Brandy says before the boys arrive, ‘is repeating the same thing and expecting different results. Here I am. Repeating.’ Not quite, though, she hopes…”

• Georgia Work$ expands, By Christine Vestal, September 20, 2010, Stateline.org: “When Augusta Roosa lost her accounting job at a restaurant on Jekyll Island, Georgia, she figured it would be just a matter of time before she landed another job in her line of work. But after six months of looking, she decided to go for a long shot. ‘I knew the back of the restaurant so I figured ‘why not learn the front?” says 29-year-old Roosa. The trick was getting a local restaurant owner to give her a chance to prove she could learn everything she needed to know on the job. That’s where a nationally recognized program called Georgia Work$ came in. Started in 2003, it allows jobless workers to become trainees for selected businesses at no cost to the employers. Starting today (Sept. 20), Georgia is more than doubling the number of people who can benefit from the program by opening it up to anyone without a job, not just those collecting unemployment checks, as originally designed…”
• Utah incentive helps put people ‘Back to Work’, By Mike Gorrell, September 20, 2010, Salt Lake Tribune: “Javier Mendez married Marquita Luker on Aug. 18, so it was not a good time for him to be out of work. But he was, laid off a couple of months earlier from a gritty job removing asbestos from older buildings. So the 32-year-old Taylorsville man was eager to take advantage of a new Utah Department of Workforce Services program that offers companies an incentive - worth up to $2,000 - to hire people receiving unemployment insurance benefits. ‘That’s like a gimme,’ Mendez said last week while working among a crisscrossing grid of pipes running in and out of a chiller unit at the $20.5 million JL Sorenson Recreation Center being built in Herriman by Layton Construction. His new company, Thermal West, is one of the first to participate in the state agency’s ‘Back to Work’ program, which began in July. The department has received enough federal funding through the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program to find work for up to 2,500 recipients of unemployment insurance benefits and 700 out-of-work youth. How? By offering companies the $2,000 subsidy if they hire someone off the active unemployment rolls and put them to work for three months, at a guaranteed minimum wage of $9 an hour…”

For the unemployed over 50, fears of never working again, By Motoko Rich, September 19, 2010, New York Times: “Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57. But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again. College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job. But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force - forever. Since the economic collapse, there are not enough jobs being created for the population as a whole, much less for those in the twilight of their careers. Of the 14.9 million unemployed, more than 2.2 million are 55 or older. Nearly half of them have been unemployed six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate in the group - 7.3 percent - is at a record, more than double what it was at the beginning of the latest recession…”

Poverty numbers get muted reaction on Hill, By Michael A. Fletcher, September 18, 2010, Washington Post: “Deborah Weinstein, a longtime advocate for the poor, calls the news that one in seven Americans is living in poverty ‘a national emergency.’ But for much of Washington’s political class, the shocking new poverty numbers provoked not alarm about the poor but further debate over tax cuts for the middle class. ‘We know that a strong middle class leads a strong economy,’ President Obama told reporters in the Rose Garden on Friday, as he used the new census report, which also showed that middle-class income has dipped slightly over the past decade, to continue making his case for limiting the cuts to family incomes under $250,000. Meanwhile, Republican leaders in the House and Senate had no reaction to the poverty report. But earlier in the week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took the Senate floor to argue for extending the tax breaks to everyone, saying, ‘We can’t let the people who have been hit hardest by this recession and who we need to create jobs to get us out of it’ be subject to a tax increase. McConnell’s spokesman later clarified the statement, saying that McConnell indeed believes the economic downturn has hit the poor harder than it has high-income business owners, who also have suffered. The reluctance of political leaders on both sides of the aisle to directly confront the fact that growing numbers of Americans are slipping into poverty reflects a stubborn reality about the poor: They are not much of a political constituency…”

For poor, health care at extremes, By Warren Wolfe, September 19, 2010, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “Perched on an exam table at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Ron Beasley, 46, sits at one end of the spectrum under Minnesota’s revamped health care program for the poorest adults, General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC). Hospitalized four times this year, he now gets intensely coordinated care from a medical team in a new clinic that seeks out and treats some of the state’s most difficult patients. The goal: Improve his health, avoid a medical crisis and save the health care system a bundle. At the other end of the spectrum is Joe ‘Smokey Joe’ Johnson, 53, a grizzled veteran of the Twin Cities streets who is pretty sure he’s got diabetes, ’some kind of breathing problem and a bum leg.’ He hasn’t had a regular doctor or clinic for years and doesn’t want one now. ‘When I get sick, I just go to whatever ER I’m closest to. I get to decide.’ The two Minneapolis men illustrate the extremes of care under the program, which was the subject of a fierce tug-of-war between legislators and Gov. Tim Pawlenty last spring and is just now taking full form in Minnesota hospitals. For thousands of the poorest and sickest Minnesotans in GAMC, the type of health care they get depends more on geography and choice than on how sick they are…”

• Poverty rise stirs debate over aid programs, By Corey Dade, September 16, 2010, National Public Radio: “The recession drove the number of poor Americans in 2009 to its highest total in half a century, yet several measures indicate the impact could well have been worse. While the Census Bureau’s report Thursday on the economic conditions of U.S. households found that 3.8 million more people lived in poverty last year than in 2008, the agency and advocates for the poor say millions of others were sustained with the help of government programs. Advocates cite federal stimulus initiatives aimed at low-income earners and the extension of unemployment benefits, which alone are credited with helping keep 3.3 million people out of poverty…”
• Poverty rate hits 15-year high, U.S. figures show, By Alfred Lubrano, September 17, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Driven by the relentless recession, the U.S. poverty rate soared to 14.3 percent in 2009, its highest level in 15 years, new government figures show. The rate was up from 13.2 percent in 2008, according to a report the Census Bureau released Thursday. Locally the picture was less dire, with poverty rising slightly to 11.1 percent in Pennsylvania and to 9.3 percent in New Jersey…”
• ‘The new poor’: Poverty reaches historic levels, By Tony Pugh, September 16, 2010, Miami Herald: “The withering recession pushed the number of Americans who are living in poverty to a 51-year high in 2009 and left a record 50.7 million people without health insurance, the Census Bureau said Thursday. The 43.6 million Americans who were poor last year — up from 39.8 million the year before — were the most since poverty estimates were first published in 1959. The national poverty rate of 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008, was the highest since 1994. The bureau also found that median income — the amount at which half of U.S. households earn more or less — had fallen 4.2 percent by 2009 since the recession began in 2007…”
• 1 in 7 in U.S. lives below poverty line, By Don Lee and Alana Semuels, September 17, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “The recession and longer-term economic troubles have pushed the nation’s poverty rate to levels not seen in more than a decade, wiping out gains in the long-running War on Poverty and adding more financial strain to the lives of millions of Americans. New Census Bureau data, released Thursday, also showed that the face of the poor has changed. Those falling below the poverty line today are more likely to be full-time workers who cannot earn enough to meet their needs or middle-class workers driven into the ranks of the poor by lost jobs or shrinking incomes. The higher poverty level - 14.3%, or an increase of nearly 4 million people last year - means higher costs for government programs such as food stamps and unemployment compensation and potentially heavier tax burdens for the country as a whole…”
• The new poor and the almost-poor: Will poverty rate climb more?, By Patrik Jonsson, September 16, 2010, Christian Science Monitor: “Call them the newly poor. They are the 4.8 million people in America who last year joined the ranks of people living in poverty - defined as having less than $22,000 in annual income for a family of four. They are people, probably, much like Reginald O’Neal and his family. Mr. O’Neal and several family members were at the Dekalb County welfare department here on Thursday, trying to get help to turn the electricity back on at their house. ‘If you were to see our house, you’d think we were middle class,’ says the 20-something Atlantan. ‘But that would be missing the point: Lately, we’re poor…’”
• US adds 3.8 million more to ranks of the poor as poverty rate jumps, By Ron Scherer, September 16, 2010, Christian Science Monitor: “The deepest recession in modern times has sharply increased the ranks of the poor during the past year, with 1 in 7 people in America officially counted as living in poverty. The news from a US Census Bureau report released Thursday underscores how deeply the Great Recession has affected the nation’s standard of living. The key findings of report, which compared income, poverty rate, and health-care insurance coverage in 2009 with 2008 numbers, include the following…”
• Despite recession, seniors see income gains, By Dennis Cauchon and Richard Wolf, September 17, 2010, USA Today: “Senior citizens are enjoying some of the biggest income gains in decades at a time when every other age group is losing ground in the recession, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. The 31 million households headed by people 65 and older saw their median income rise by a healthy 5.8% in 2009 after inflation and 7.1% since the recession began in December 2007. Every other age group has suffered income losses of at least 4% during the recession, the data show…”
• Not quite poor, but struggling: Do seniors need their own poverty index?, By Matt O’Brien, September 16, 2010, Contra Costa Times: “The proportion of America’s seniors living in poverty dropped last year to just under 9 percent, a hopeful statistic in an otherwise dismal report on poverty released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. Local senior advocates, however, say the numbers mask some of the financial struggles older residents face living in the Bay Area, where the cost of living is high…”
• Poverty rise reflects toll of recession, By Bill Bush and Rita Price, September 17, 2010, Columbus Dispatch: “They didn’t earn much, but for most of their marriage, the Bowens had enough. ‘We could afford to go out and eat once in a while, do the stuff that families do,’ Carolyn Bowen said. ‘Now, we can’t even go for ice cream.’ The math no longer works: Ron Bowen lost a job that paid $20 an hour and, after eight months of unemployment, finally found another - cleaning offices for $9.50 an hour. The Bowens and their children have joined 43.6million other Americans - about one in seven - who live in an uncertain place where groceries are bought with government-issued benefit cards and bills might not be paid. A U.S. Census Bureau report released yesterday put the nation’s official poverty rate at 14.3 percent last year, up from 13.2 percent in 2008. It hasn’t been higher since 1994, but is still 8.1 percentage points lower than in 1959, the first year for which estimates are available…”
• A descent into poverty for millions, By Warren Wolfe and Jeremy Olson, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “Ramsey County human services planner Jim Anderson didn’t need Thursday’s census report to know that poverty has climbed sharply since the economy collapsed in 2008. Last month he turned away 59 adults with 126 children seeking emergency shelter for families. In a report that confirmed what experts like Anderson have sensed, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday that the nation’s poverty rate shot to 14.3 percent last year, the highest in 16 years, and that one in five American children were living below the poverty line. Household incomes also stagnated, and the number of people without health insurance reached an all-time high of 51 million. The report suggested that in Minnesota, too, poverty is on the rise…”
• Poverty in Hawaii highest since ‘97, By Mary Vorsino, September 17, 2010, Honolulu Star-Advertiser: “Thousands more Hawaii residents fell into poverty last year, driving up the rate here to its highest level since 1997, Census Bureau figures released yesterday show. The poverty rate in Hawaii rose to 12.5 percent in 2009 — with more than 156,000 people living below the poverty line — the third consecutive year the state saw growing numbers of impoverished people. In 2007, 7.5 percent of the state’s population was below the poverty line. In 2008, the number rose to 9.9 percent — or 125,000 people…”
• Michigan’s poverty rate hits 14%, highest level in 16 years, By Mike Wilkinson and Catherine Jun, September 17, 2010, Detroit News: “Michigan’s poverty rate last year reached a 16-year high as the full effects of the recession continued to sweep across the country, according to a report issued Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The state’s poverty rate in 2009 rose to 14 percent, up from 13 percent in 2008. That’s 1.4 million people in poverty. In 2000, the rate was 9.9 percent. Data further showed the Midwest — plagued by job losses in manufacturing — was hit the hardest in median income, falling to its lowest point since 1994. But the region didn’t suffer alone. Nationally, the number of poor climbed to the highest level since the 1960s, leaving one in seven Americans in poverty, the report said…”
• Poverty at a 51-year high in the U.S., By Renée C. Lee, September 17, 2010, Houston Chronicle: “More than 43 million Americans lived in poverty last year, the largest number in 51 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The figure pushes the national poverty rate to 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008, statistics released Thursday show. In Texas, there were about 4.3 million people living in poverty in 2009, increasing the state’s poverty rate to 17.3 percent, up from 15.9 percent the prior year. County numbers won’t be available until later this month, but local social service agencies say they expect them to reflect what’s happening at the national and state level…”
• Texas seeks answers to rising poverty rate, By Robert T. Garrett and Kim Horner, September 17, 2010, Dallas Morning News: “The government announced Thursday that nearly 4.3 million Texans lived in poverty last year, a whopping 11 percent increase. Larry James and Jill Cumnock absorbed the news many months ago. They run charities that feed and tend a swelling group of poor North Texans, and they say demand has gone up by at least 25 percent, and in some cases has doubled, since the economy took a dive in 2008. ‘The need is going up, that’s for sure,’ said James, president and chief executive of Central Dallas Ministries. He said his nonprofit is on track to feed, house and assist as many as 48,000 people this year - up from 43,000 last year and 34,000 two years ago…”
• One-time working men now the ‘fresh face of poverty’, By Rick Montgomery, September 16, 2010, Kansas City Star: “The nation’s poverty rate rose sharply last year and the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 10 percent, according to new government figures. Just further evidence, in cold numbers, of how the second year of the Great Recession sent working men such as Matt Stephens spiraling. He and hundreds of others lined up this week for free lunches at the Wilhelmina Gill Multi-Service Center in Kansas City, Kan. Stephens, 45, spent a year in college after high school, then attended trade school, drove a truck for pay and also worked in his family’s insulation business…”

Racial disparity in school suspensions, By Sam Dillon, September 13, 2010, New York Times: “In many of the nation’s middle schools, black boys were nearly three times as likely to be suspended as white boys, according to a new study, which also found that black girls were suspended at four times the rate of white girls. School authorities also suspended Hispanic and American Indian middle school students at higher rates than white students, though not at such disproportionate rates as for black children, the study found. Asian students were less likely to be suspended than whites. The study analyzed four decades of federal Department of Education data on suspensions, with a special focus on figures from 2002 and 2006, that were drawn from 9,220 of the nation’s 16,000 public middle schools…”

• Protecting the pregnant mind, By Harvey Black, September 13, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “At least one in 13 pregnant women suffers from mental health problems, and that rate jumps to one in three if women have a history of mental health issues, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study that researchers say is the first to systematically examine the issue on a national scale. ‘Poor mental health during pregnancy can lead to problems during pregnancy and beyond, like having low birth weight babies or postpartum depression. So we want to try and prevent women from developing mental health problems during pregnancy,’ said Whitney Witt, lead author of the study and assistant professor of population health sciences at UW-Madison. The study was published online in the July issue of the Archives of Women’s Mental Health. The research is important because the treatment window for many women can be small, says Myrna Weissman, professor of epidemiology and psychiatry at Columbia University…”
• A mother’s education has a huge effect on a child’s health, By David Brown, September 16, 2010, Washington Post: “It turns out that pencils and books for mothers may be as important as vaccines and drugs for babies in reducing child mortality in the developing world. That’s because a mother’s education level has a huge, if indirect, effect on the health of her children. That relationship, observed in many small studies in rich countries, turns out to be true everywhere on the globe, according to a new study. Half the reduction in child mortality over the past 40 years can be attributed to the better education of women, according to the analysis published in the journal Lancet. For every one-year increase in the average education of reproductive-age women, a country experienced a 9.5 percent decrease in the child deaths…”

• Poverty rate rose sharply in 2009, says Census Bureau, By Erik Eckholm, September 16, 2010, New York Times: “Forty-four million people in the United States, or one in seven residents, lived in poverty in 2009, an increase of 4 million from the year before, the Census Bureau reported on Thursday. The poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent - the highest level since 1994 - from 13.2 percent in 2008. The rise was steepest for children, with one in five residents under 18 living below the official poverty line, the bureau said. The report provides the most detailed picture yet of the impact of the recession and unemployment on incomes, especially at the bottom of the scale. It also suggested that the temporary increases in benefits in aid provided in last year’s stimulus bill eased the burdens on millions of families. For a single adult in 2009, the poverty line was $10,830 in pretax cash income; for a family of four, $22,050…”
• Poverty Rate Rises to 14.3%, By Conor Dougherty, Sara Murray, and Ruth Mantell, September 16, 2010, Wall Street Journal: “Incomes for the typical U.S. household fell slightly last year as substantial government aid and such self-help actions as families doubling up and young adults moving in with their parents muted the impact of the worst recession since the 1930s, the Census Bureau said Thursday. The bureau’s annual snapshot of American living standards also found that the fraction of Americans living in poverty rose sharply to 14.3% from 13.2% in 2008, its highest level since 1994. A record 43.6 million Americans were living in poverty last year, the Census Bureau said. The new data underscore the extent to which U.S. households relied on government benefits-and each other-to weather the recession. The numbers also show how living standards at the middle of the middle class have stalled. The report comes amid a vigorous election-year debate over how government policy can best help the poor and unemployed…”
• One in seven Americans is living in poverty, Census shows, By Carol Morello, September 16, 2010, Washington Post: “One in seven Americans is living in poverty, the highest number in the half-century that the government has kept such statistics, the Census Bureau announced Thursday. Last year was the third consecutive year that the poverty rate climbed, in part because of the recession, rising from 13.2 percent in 2008 to 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people, last year. Asians were the only ethnic group whose poverty rate did not change substantially; every other race and Hispanics experienced increases in poverty rates. In addition, 51 million Americans were uninsured, as the number of people with health insurance dropped from 255 million to less than 254 million — the first decrease since the government started keeping track in 1987. The number would have been worse because 6.5 million fewer people got insurance through their jobs, but it was offset by a leap in government-backed health insurance. More than 30 percent of Americans now get coverage from the government…”
• Census: 1 in 7 Americans live in poverty, By Hope Yen (AP), September 16, 2010, Miami Herald: “The ranks of the working-age poor climbed to the highest level since the 1960s as the recession threw millions of people out of work last year, leaving one in seven Americans in poverty. The overall poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people, the Census Bureau said Thursday in its annual report on the economic well-being of U.S. households. The report covers 2009, President Barack Obama’s first year in office. The poverty rate increased from 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million people, in 2008…”
• Number of uninsured Americans hits record high, By Phil Galewitz and Andrew Villegas, September 16, 2010, MSNBC.com: “In a reflection of the battered economy, the number of people without health insurance rose sharply last year to 50.7 million - an all time high - according to data released Thursday by the Census Bureau. That pushed the rate of uninsured Americans to 16.7 percent last year from 15.4 percent in 2008, when there were 46.3 million uninsured. It was one of the largest single year increases since the Census starting tracking the figure in 1987. Nearly every demographic and geographic group posted a rise in the uninsured rate-with the exception of children, who remained stable at about 10 percent. The sharpest jumps were in the Midwest and South, although all areas of the country saw increases…”
• Many say poverty rate is a poor measure, By Allison Linn, September 16, 2010, MSNBC.com: ” The latest national poverty rate data was released Thursday, and that means there’s finally one thing both liberals and conservatives can agree on: The way we measure poverty is flawed. ‘Everybody’s dissatisfied with the poverty rate, although not always for the same reasons,’ said Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. The Census Bureau said Thursday that the poverty rate hit 14.3 percent in 2009, up from 13.2 percent in 2008. That’s the highest poverty rate since 1994 and the second significant increase since 2004. The number of people living in poverty hit 43.6 million in 2009, the Census Bureau said, up from 39.8 million people in 2008. That’s the largest number of people living in poverty since recordkeeping began in 1959. The numbers are staggering, but researchers on both sides of the ideological fence argue that they don’t paint the full picture. Liberals often say the data understate the extent to which Americans are suffering to make ends meet, and some conservatives worry the data overstate the problem…”

World poverty seen falling sharply but patchily, By Teresa Cerojano (AP), September 15, 2010, Washington Post: “It’s lunchtime, but the cooking pots are empty outside Nurain Dimalao’s shack. Her 7-year-old son plays amid the flies in garbage-strewn sand. She worries where his next meal will come from. Baseco Compound, a shantytown of 50,000 people on the edge of Manila Bay, is the familiar face of poverty in villages and urban slums around the world. Yet there’s also good news, albeit qualified: Worldwide, the poor are getting less poor, though not everywhere. The share of the population of developing regions who live in extreme poverty is expected to fall to 15 percent by 2015, down from 46 percent in 1990, according to the U.N. The gains stem largely from robust economic growth in countries such as China and India, the world’s two most populous countries. Ten years ago, the U.N. set eight ‘Millennium Development Goals’ to tackle the world’s most pressing humanitarian problems by halving rates of affliction in such areas as disease, poverty and lack of basic education by 2015, compared with 1990…”

Farmers’ markets draw few food stamp users despite outreach; distance, cost remain problems, By David Runk, and Sarah Skidmore (AP), September 15, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Despite widespread efforts to attract low-income shoppers, farmers’ markets have had limited success in drawing people like Bishop Reed, who in the past three years has lost his job and his home. Reed signed up for food stamps six months ago and uses them to buy groceries for himself, his teenage daughter and a niece at either a local grocery chain or one of the discount stores. ‘What is a farmers’ market?’ asked Reed, a Portland-area resident, when told he could use his benefits there as well. About one-fourth of the nation’s 6,000 or so farmers’ markets accept food stamps, now known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. But the bulk of SNAP benefits redeemed last year - 82 percent - went to grocery stores and supercenters. Less than 0.01 percent was spent at farmers’ markets, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture…”

Breakfast in class: Fight against kids’ hunger starts at school, By Martha T. Moore, September 14, 2010, USA Today: “At 8:28 a.m., the cafeteria ladies of Centennial High School take up positions in the second-floor hallway, just outside closed classroom doors. Each woman is pushing a cart loaded with milk, juice, whole-wheat doughnuts and individual packages of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereal. When science teacher Sue Aronofsky opens the door of her classroom, kids stream into the hallway. ‘You go around, you get your stuff, and you tell the lady thank you,’ she says. Students eat at their desks as announcements drone from the public-address system. After a brief pause to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag and toss empty milk cartons, Aronofsky’s freshmen turn to examining pill bugs under magnifying glasses. Time: 8:45 a.m. The same scene occurs all over the 1,034-student school. Last year, when Centennial served free breakfast in the cafeteria each morning before the start of classes, fewer than 100 students showed up to eat daily. On this morning four days into the new year, with breakfast delivered to classrooms, 864 students have been fed. That many children eating school breakfast is rare. Although the number of hungry children in the U.S. is rising, fewer than half of the kids who could be eating a free or low-cost breakfast at school are getting one…”

Poor economy, better outreach means more kids enrolled in KidCare, By Richard Martin, September 13, 2010, St. Petersburg Times: “Fifteen months after Gov. Charlie Crist signed a law making it easier for low-income families to get health insurance for their children, more people are doing just that. Enrollment in the state’s KidCare program has increased more than 15 percent since then. The increase is coming in all parts of KidCare; children’s Medicaid, for the poorest families, now has more than 1.5 million enrollees. More than 255,000 are enrolled in the three levels of SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program), geared for families with more income. Officials say the law, which streamlined the application process, has played a key role. So has greater public outreach. But the poor economy is also a factor, with more people losing their jobs and their health benefits in the process. There’s enough money to enroll as many as 289,000 Florida children in the three SCHIP programs, and experts say the need is clear…”

Jobless are straining Social Security’s disability benefits program, By Michael A. Fletcher, September 14, 2010, Washington Post: “The number of former workers seeking Social Security disability benefits has spiked with the nation’s economic problems, heightening concern that the jobless are expanding the program beyond its intended purpose of aiding the disabled. Applications to the program soared by 21 percent, to 2.8 million, from 2008 to 2009, as the economy was seriously faltering. The growth is the sharpest in the 54-year history of the program. It threatens the program’s fiscal stability and adds to an administrative backlog that is slowing the flow of benefits to those who need them most. Moreover, about 8 million workers were receiving disability benefits in June, an increase of 12.6 percent since the recession began in 2007, according to Social Security Administration statistics…”

Poverty rate paradox: Poverty rises, but FBI crime rate falls, By Patrik Jonsson, September 13, 2010, Christian Science Monitor: “The much-studied links between poverty and crime rates - which helped give rise to many Great Society programs - have not materialized so far in the Great Recession. Even with 15 percent of Americans now officially poor, both violent crime and property crime continued to drop in the United States in 2009, the FBI reported Monday. The housing crash’s backwash of foreclosures and high unemployment has pushed some in the middle class and the working poor to the brink of despair and insolvency. Yet crimes reports ranging from murder to carjackings, from graft to purse-snatching, all declined during the same period, forcing social scientists to reexamine long-held assumptions about the causes of crime and how society can best battle back…”

Number of families in shelters rises, By Michael Luo, September 11, 2010, New York Times: “For a few hours at the mall here this month, Nick Griffith, his wife, Lacey Lennon, and their two young children got to feel like a regular family again. Never mind that they were just killing time away from the homeless shelter where they are staying, or that they had to take two city buses to get to the shopping center because they pawned one car earlier this year and had another repossessed, or that the debit card Ms. Lennon inserted into the A.T.M. was courtesy of the state’s welfare program. They ate lunch at the food court, browsed for clothes and just strolled, blending in with everyone else out on a scorching hot summer day. ‘It’s exactly why we come here,’ Ms. Lennon said. ‘It reminds us of our old life.’ For millions who have lost jobs or faced eviction in the economic downturn, homelessness is perhaps the darkest fear of all. In the end, though, for all the devastation wrought by the recession, a vast majority of people who have faced the possibility have somehow managed to avoid it. Nevertheless, from 2007 through 2009, the number of families in homeless shelters - households with at least one adult and one minor child - leapt to 170,000 from 131,000, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development…”

Debit card refunds for lower-income folks should work in Michigan, By Susan Tompor, September 12, 2010, Detroit Free Press: “The U.S. Treasury plans to test the delivery of tax refunds in plastic for lower-income individuals who do not have bank accounts, and Michigan seems to me like a no-brainer for a pilot program. ‘I think Michigan would provide fertile ground,’ said David Marzahl, president of the Center for Economic Progress, the nation’s largest tax-preparation provider for low-income families. The Chicago-based center leads the National Community Tax Coalition, a group of community-based tax and financial services programs that serve more than 1 million low-income families nationwide. Marzahl noted that communities in Michigan offer racial, ethnic and economic diversity. Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael S. Barr has a Michigan connection, too, having taught at the University of Michigan Law School. More important, consumers in metro Detroit — and other cities in the Midwest — have long been targeted by tax-preparation companies that pitch high-cost refund-anticipation loans to individuals who do not have bank accounts…”

Requests for food aid up 50% in past 2 years, By Susan Olp, September 10, 2010, Billings Gazette: “As if additional proof was needed of the sagging economy’s effect, more people than ever are seeking help to supplement their food budget. That’s true for the nation as a whole, as well as in the state and locally. The number of people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — formerly the Food Stamp program — has steadily increased in the past two years. ‘There is more usage of this subsidy program than there has been in history,’ said Linda Snedigar, administrator for the Human and Community Services Division of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. She recently attended a conference titled ‘SNAP Makes History,’ underlining that fact. As unemployment has steadily increased, so has the number of people enrolling in the federally funded SNAP program, Snedigar said. ‘Over the last two years we’ve seen almost a 50 percent increase in the number of people receiving SNAP in Montana,’ she said. That’s about one person for every eight in the state, Snedigar said. In August 2006, the number of recipients in Montana receiving benefits through SNAP totaled 81,717. That number dipped to 81,240 in 2008 and then climbed to 118,958 in 2010…”

Flint eyes drug tests for public housing, By Kim Kozlowski, September 13, 2010, Detroit News: “Flint’s public housing authority, in an effort to fight crime in the projects, is considering a requirement for all current and prospective residents to take a drug test to keep their federally subsidized apartments. Flint Housing Commission Executive Rodney Slaughter said he wants a drug-testing program modeled after the city of Indianapolis, where public housing residents are required to take annual drug tests. If a resident tests positive, they would have 30 days to test negative or seek help. ‘We’re trying to change the mindset,’ Slaughter said. ‘There is a reasonable amount of negative events that take place … drug dealing, gambling, dice throwing. People should have the right to live in a drug-free, clean community.’ But civil rights advocates said they will fight the effort. ‘Being poor is not a crime in Michigan,’ said Rana Elmir, director of the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. ‘To treat all tenants of public housing as criminals is bad public policy. And it’s unconstitutional.’ Flint’s drug arrests have been steadily declining, from 1,257 in 2005 to 618 in 2009, according to statistics provided by the mayor’s office. But in 2009, Flint had the second-highest violent crime rate among the nation’s largest cities, second only to St. Louis, according to an analysis of data police provided to the FBI…”

With election looming, record gains in poverty expected, By Hope Yen and Liz Sidoti (AP), September 12, 2010, Lawrence Journal World: “The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty. Census figures for 2009 - the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat’s presidency - are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings. It’s unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated poverty rate increase - from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent - would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power. ‘The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy and making sure there are enough jobs out there,’ Obama said Friday at a White House news conference. He stressed his commitment to helping the poor achieve middle-class status and said, ‘If we can grow the economy faster and create more jobs, then everybody is swept up into that virtuous cycle.’ Interviews with six demographers who closely track poverty trends found wide consensus that 2009 figures are likely to show a significant rate increase to the range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent…”

• A new generation of caregivers takes control of kids, By Carol Morello, September 10, 2010, Washington Post: “The number of children being raised by their grandparents has risen sharply since the start of the recession in 2007, according to a new Pew Research Center study that found one in 10 children in the U.S. now lives with a grandparent. The trend was most noticeable among whites, Pew said in its analysis of census data. Those whites who were primary caregivers for their grandchildren rose 9 percent from 2007 to 2008, compared with a 2 percent increase among black grandparents and no change among Hispanics. In all, 2.9 million children are being raised mainly by at least one grandparent, or 4 percent of all children. For most of the decade, the number of children having a grandparent as their primary caretaker rose slowly and steadily, Pew noted. But as the economy soured, the rise was sudden and steep. Three quarters of the 8 percent total increase since 2000 in the number of grandparents raising their children’s kids occurred in the year following the official start of the recession in December 2007…”
• New report: more grandparents raising grandkids, By David Crary (AP), September 9, 2010, Boston Globe: “The number of U.S. children being raised by their grandparents rose sharply as the recession began, according to a new analysis of census data. The reasons, while somber, were not all economic. These grandparents often give themselves high marks as caregivers, but many face distinctive stresses as they confront unanticipated financial burdens and culture shock that come with the responsibilities of child-raising. In all, roughly 7 million U.S. children live in households that include at least one grandparent, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the most recent Census Bureau data, from 2008. Of that number, 2.9 million were being raised primarily by their grandparents — up 16 percent from 2000, with a 6 percent surge just from 2007 to 2008…”

Poverty hits rural Maine the hardest, By Eric Russell, September 9, 2010, Bangor Daily News: “Maine’s poverty rate in 2008 was slightly below the national average, but the state’s rural counties are at a much higher level, according to a study released Thursday. The report, which was researched and prepared by the Maine Community Action Association and the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center of the University of Maine, highlights the widespread impact of the current economic recession, said MCAA president Tim King. ‘The report doesn’t go into the causes of poverty and it doesn’t answer questions about what needs to be done,’ he said Thursday. ‘That’s up to state policymakers.’ One of those policymakers, Rep. Emily Cain, D-Orono, who co-chairs the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee, said the poverty report affirms what most Mainers already know. ‘The [recession] has made an already immense need greater,’ she said. ‘But this begins to lay a roadmap and help triage the things that [the Legislature] needs to address.’ The poverty report arrived the same day the Maine Heritage Policy Center held a press conference and issued a study saying Maine is the most welfare-dependent state in the nation. The center says enrollment has grown by 70 percent since 2003, while its poverty level has remained stable…”

• Federal aid leaves Kentucky Medicaid short, provides extra for schools, By Tom Loftus, September 9, 2010, Louisville Courier-Journal: “Congress’ recent effort to help the states financially will provide $135 million in unanticipated aid to Kentucky schools - but still leaves a $470 million hole in the Medicaid budget. In making that announcement at a news conference Thursday, Gov. Steve Beshear blamed the Medicaid shortfall on the General Assembly. He said legislators ‘assumed we would get millions more and balanced their budget on that assumption. … I called it ‘a hope and a prayer’ when they came up with it. It leaves us in a real crunch.’ For their part, legislative leaders accused the administration of stonewalling committees that were seeking ways to contain Medicaid’s burgeoning cost. The amounts for Medicaid and the schools are roughly the same as the projections made at the time Congress passed the Education, Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act in August. The shortfall in Medicaid, a $5.2 billion program that provides health care for 800,000 poor and disabled Kentuckians, results from an inaccurate estimate of anticipated federal assistance in the 2010-12 budget approved by the General Assembly in May…”
• Beshear: State faces $470 million shortfall in Medicaid budget, By Jack Brammer, September 10, 2010, Lexington Herald-Leader: “A looming $470 million shortfall in the state Medicaid budget could have ‘a catastrophic impact’ on Kentuckians, Gov. Steve Beshear said Thursday as he announced the state will not get as much federal funding for the program as expected. Beshear had better news in reporting that Kentucky will receive nearly $135 million in federal money to support teachers, but that money can’t be used to help the cash-strapped Medicaid program that provides health insurance for the needy. Beshear said at a Capitol news conference that the state budget approved this year by the General Assembly assumed the federal government would provide an additional $238 million for Medicaid. Congress did provide additional money to help the states last month, but Kentucky will receive $137 million - only about 58 percent of what was expected, he said.That leaves a $111 million hole, Beshear said. Since funding for Medicaid is matched by the federal government on a roughly 4-to-1 basis, the gap represents a $470 million total program shortfall, the Democratic governor said. About 800,000 poor and disabled Kentuckians depend on the $6 billion program for health insurance…”