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The Bureau reported that 2008 median (inflation adjusted) household income fell 3.6%, the largest single-year decline on record to the lowest level since 1997 and falling as conditions continue to worsen.
The plight of the poor and impoverished shows up in numerous other reports that paint a darker picture than the Census Bureau and suggest much worse ahead:
-- an unprecedented, growing disparity between the very rich and other income groups;
-- economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez's research showing the top 1% of households got two-thirds of the national income growth during the last recovery, a larger share than at any time since the 1920s;
-- wages losing ground to inflation;
-- millions of children dependent on school lunches for a hot meal;
-- an Economic Policy Institute estimate of one-quarter of all children living in poverty by yearend 2009;
-- the continued erosion of employer and government-provided benefits, including at the state and local levels; the growing uninsured crisis is discussed below;
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