Philly still America’s poorest big city
Posted by Philadelphia Inquirer on September 25, 2017
An ‘uncomfortable’ life: Philly still America’s poorest big city
Alfred Lubrano, Staff Writer, Philadelphia Inquirer
Updated: Wednesday, September 13, 2017, 6:44 PM
Philadelphia’s poverty rate, a stubborn and entrenched indicator of hard times, remained stagnant in 2016, even as poverty declined throughout America.
Philadelphia’s 2016 poverty and deep-poverty rates were statistically the same as in 2015 — 25.7 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, more than 37 percent of the city’s children were living in poverty.
At the same time, the city defied another national trend: Its median household income — $41,449 —dropped a bit between 2015 and 2016, even as America as a whole saw incomes recovering from the recession and rising from $57,230 to $59,039.
The data come from the U.S. Census American Community Survey released Thursday morning. Census figures are adjusted to 2016 dollars.
“It’s incredibly disheartening to see that Philadelphia hasn’t shared in the gains seen nationally,” said Kathy Fisher, policy director at the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger. “And it’s unacceptable that we still have a third of our children growing up in poverty.”
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