The Poor | featured news

Federal officials rejected a proposal to bar New York City’s food stamp users from buying soda with their benefits.

The results run counter to the idea that more supermarkets can curb obesity in low-income neighborhoods. Better access to supermarkets — long touted as a way to curb obesity in low-income neighborhoods — doesn't improve people's diets, according to new research.

Boommi Gowda used to fear the night. Her vision fogged by glaucoma, she could not see by just the dim glow of a kerosene lamp, so she avoided going outside where king cobras slithered freely and tigers carried off neighborhood dogs....

The Social Security Administration made $6.5 billion in overpayments to people not entitled to receive them in 2009, including $4 billion under a supplemental income program for the very poor, a government investigator said Tuesday.

The billions of dollars in cuts to government services signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown address a portion of the estimated $26-billion deficit facing California. Brown is still negotiating with Republicans on a proposal to put tax extensions before voters.Gov.

Women who are poor are much more likely to be obese but men are not, U.S. government researchers said on Tuesday in a report that contradicts some common perceptions.

The report said that 44 million people, or one in seven residents, lived in poverty in the United States in 2009, the highest rate since 1994.

Some argue that the state's policy is shortchanging some welfare recipients. But ending the policy could cost some current recipients their benefits, state officials and advocates for the poor say.

The U.S.

Many low-income urban areas across the United States have epidemics of HIV, with 2.1 percent of heterosexuals in poverty-stricken urban areas infected with the incurable AIDS virus, U.S. scientists said on Monday.

China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police checking identification papers, in bid to reduce rising crime.