Poverty | featured news

Sabino Fuentes-Sanchez hid $25,000 all around his house because he didn't trust banks. Lasonia Christon receives her Walmart salary on a pre-paid debit card. Kim James was homeless for most of the past decade in part because she had no place to save money. There are plenty of reasons people still live all-cash lives, but the sheer number who do it might surprise you.

Five years after the housing bust, the U.S. economy is showing signs of finally bottoming out. Americans are on the move again after putting their lives on hold and staying put. More young adults are leaving their parents' homes to take a chance with college or the job market, while once-sharp declines in births are leveling off and poverty is slowing.

After three straight years of increases, the number of Americans living below the poverty line remained the same in 2011 versus the prior year, but overall Americans' incomes dropped.

The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net....

The world is running out of time to make sure there is enough food, water and energy to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population and to avoid sending up to 3 billion people into poverty, a U.N. report warned on Monday.

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans, almost 1 in 2, have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that is shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

John William Springs, a retiree who gets nearly $12000 a year in Social Security and disability checks, is $1300 above the poverty threshold: officially, not poor.

The Census Bureau report also found that median household incomes declined by 2.3 percent in 2010, in a sign of the toll the economic slump has taken.

For many in the black community, where unemployment has risen, job loss has knocked them out of the middle class and back into poverty.

Despite soaring poverty and unemployment, California and Los Angeles County have fared better on many indicators during the recession than the nation as a whole, according to a report released Tuesday by USC.