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Americans are getting poorer, and it's going to get worse
The early impact of the worst recession since the 1930s pushed median incomes down, forced millions more people into poverty and left more Americans without health care in 2008, according to new annual survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Poor people, working people, blacks, Hispanics and children bore a disproportionate share of the hardship. The new figures, however, likely understate the severity of the economic downturn because a large portion of nation's job losses and unemployment rate increases occurred after the Census survey data was collected in March as part of the annual Current Population Survey.
The poor performances of key economic and social indicators come as little surprise, since the recession officially began in December 2007 and continued to create economic carnage for 18 months before appearing to bottom out over the summer.
Along the way, the nation's real median income–the point at which half the nation earns less and half more–fell 3.6 percent from $52,163 in 2007 to $50,303 in 2008. That was the first such decline in three years and the worst in the first year of any recession since Census Bureau began collecting the data during World War II, said Lawrence F. Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University.