Census finds rising numbers of poor in America

More Americans were poor last year - 43.6 million total - than at any time since the U.S. Census Bureau began estimating the poverty rate 50 years ago. However, the 14.3 percent 2009 poverty rate is 8 percentage points below what the agency recorded in that first year, 1959.

The poverty rate for all age groups increased, except for those age 65 and over, according to the bureau's report Thursday on income, poverty and health insurance coverage for the nation and states. The bureau is to release the same information for counties and towns Sept. 28.

The federal poverty threshold on which the census calculates poverty rates is flawed because it doesn't take into account the wide disparities in the cost of living for different regions of the country - such as higher costs in Nassau and Suffolk counties, said Anthony Farmer, a spokesman for the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.

Gwen O'Shea, president and chief executive of the Health and Welfare Council of Long Island, said the statistics were not surprising. "Everyone is feeling the economic downturn," she said. "What I think is important to bring to people's attention - and it will be interesting to see the Long Island numbers - is when you talk about increases in poverty, you're using a federal standard, and the federal standard doesn't take into account the actual cost of living in a region." The Census Bureau report found that there were also more people without health insurance, 50.7 million in 2009, or 16.7 percent, from 46.3 million or 15.4 percent the year before.

That's the "largest number of uninsured since we started collecting [the data] in 1987. We can't say why," said David Johnson, the Census Bureau's chief of housing and household economic statistics. Under the federal poverty threshold, a family of four earning $21,756 would be considered poor, making them eligible for federal government assistance programs.

But O'Shea said a family of four on Long Island could earn much more and still be struggling.

She pointed to a 2010 report, "Self Sufficiency Standard for New York State," by University of Washington researchers, which calculated that an income of $74,000 in Nassau and $78,000 in Suffolk was needed for an adult with two children to meet "basic needs."

"Over 45 percent of our families fall between the federal poverty level and self-sufficiency level," O'Shea said.

Even for those just above the federal poverty line on Long Island, it's a struggle to make ends meet.

Wendy Gaudioso, 38, of Bohemia, is married with four children. She works part time at a dermatologist's office, while her husband is a self-employed mechanic. She said the couple earns about $46,000 and faces foreclosure on their home. She is losing hope on getting a child-care subsidy as she casts about trying to make ends meet. "We used to be middle-class and right now we are just not even making it," she said.

Nicole Benitez, 26, of Brentwood, a single mother of two boys, ages 4 and 5, works full time as an accounting clerk at a nonprofit child care resource agency, earning $33,000 a year. She is grateful for the child-care subsidy from the state that provides partial payment for day care for her children, and to a landlord "that helped me out by accepting what I could afford," $1,000 a month on a two-bedroom apartment, including utilities.

Still, Benitez said she lives "pretty much on a hope and a prayer."