(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Mississippi's poverty rate has been the highest, at 22.4 percent, followed by New Mexico's at 20.4 percent, meaning that one out of five in the two states lived below poverty line.
The facts of the study also show that the deep poverty levels in the District of Columbia, and the Washington DC metropolitan area had the lowest poverty rate in the US, at 8.4 percent, reportedly due to its wealthier suburbs. Honolulu had the second lowest, at 9.1 percent.
According to the census, the percentage of people living below poverty line rose in 32 states between 2009 and 2010, meaning more than 46-million of about 312,467,000 Americans lived in poverty last year, the census said.
The census reported: “No state had a statistically significant decline in either the number of people in poverty or the poverty rate between 2009 and 2010.”
The US recession began in 2007. More than a year after the recession officially ended in 2009, the US unemployment rate remains above 9 percent, and the poverty rate rose to 15.3 percent in 2010 from 14.3 percent in 2009.
The “incredibly unequal top-down distribution of wealth” in the US has formed an elite group who controls most aspects of the country's affluence.
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