U.S. Poverty Up Second Year on Bush's Watch

[TexasStooge]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some 1.7 million people in the United States slid into poverty in 2002 and incomes slipped for the second year in a row with blacks particularly hard hit, the U.S. government said on Friday in a report sure to provide ammunition for Democrats in the upcoming presidential race.

The Census Bureau's annual report showed the number of people living below the poverty line rose to 34.6 million last year, from 32.9 million in 2001, when the national economy first went into recession.

Overall, the percentage of the U.S. population living in poverty grew for a second year, rising to 12.1 percent from 11.7 percent in 2001. The poverty line was defined in 2002 as $18,244 for a family of four with two children.

Blacks were the only group which saw a larger percentage of its members living in poverty.

The Census Bureau, which only last year allowed people to identify themselves as being from more than one race, said that 23.9 percent of people who said they were black and another race lived in poverty in 2002 while 24.1 percent who identified themselves as only black were poor. Both figures are higher than in 2001, when 22.7 percent of blacks were listed as living in poverty.

The report also said that real median income for all races fell 1.1 percent last year to $42,409.

Democrats have made political hay out of the failure of a sluggish recovery to create new jobs for the 3.3 million private sector employees who have been thrown out of work since Bush took office in January 2001.

"That's a national scandal, and as president I'll reverse this dramatic slide down the ladder of opportunity," presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, said in a statement.

Private economists and White House aides say a sustained growth rate of 4 percent or higher is needed to stem job losses and begin to create new employment. The economy grew an annualized 3.3 percent in the second quarter of 2003.

President Bush, who is up for re-election in 2004, blames the Sept. 11 attacks and a wave of corporate scandals for the economy's failure to recover more quickly from a recession which began in early 2001. He says his tax cuts will fix the nation's economic malaise and says they are already starting to show results.

"Unemployment is a lagging indicator, but let me remind you that the actions we have taken to boost the economy and create jobs is essential to turning this around," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told a news briefing.

But Democrats say the tax cuts benefited the wealthy and blame them for the soft economy, as well as bulging federal deficits that abruptly took the place of fat surpluses projected just a few years ago.

BLACKS, MIDWEST, CITIES HARDEST HIT

While blacks as a group suffered the most, analysts said, few groups escaped unscathed.

"There were statistically significant increases in the number of poor children, the number of poor blacks, the number of poor Hispanics," said Robert Greenstein, head of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities think tank in Washington, D.C.

The Census report showed that income declined for some minorities, including 2.9 percent for Hispanics, who can be of any race.

The Midwest, where manufacturing industries have been hard hit in recent years, was the only region where median income fell and the only one where the poverty rate increased.

The South still had the lowest median income, $39,522, and the highest poverty rate overall at 13.8 percent.