Report: 25 percent of N.J. families are poor
Sunday September 8, 2013, 12:02 PM
BY DAVE SHEINGOLD
STAFF WRITER
The Record
Poverty levels in New Jersey are bad and getting worse, as a quarter of the state’s households now struggle to afford housing, food, medical care and other necessities, according to a new report by a leading poverty research group.
The study, released today by the Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute, says that in one of the nation’s wealthiest states, 2.1 million people live in households that have a hard time meeting their basic needs. That number grew by about 359,000 during and after the Great Recession and now comprises 24.7 percent of New Jersey residents.
Hardest hit is Passaic County, where 37 percent of the residents are poor, followed by Cumberland, Essex and Hudson counties, while Bergen County’s rate stands at 18 percent. Even in Morris, Hunterdon and Somerset and other wealthy counties in northern New Jersey, 10 to 14 percent of the residents are poor, according to the report, which is based largely on 2011 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The number of households having a hard time staying afloat financially highlights the underside of a state where the median household income ranked third in the country in 2011.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/Many_NJ_families_struggling_to_meet_basic_needs.html#sthash.fplza4Nm.dpuf
They forgot to highlight this fact in the article’s title which was burried in the story:
“The institute defined poverty as living on incomes less than twice the official poverty line.”
Wow… those poverty levels really shot up once they DOUBLED the official poverty line.