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 "... the general trend of the last thirty years has been one of falling incomes, despite a steadily growing economy."
- Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work
The U.S. Bureau of the Census shows that 13.3% of Americans, or 35.6 million people, lived in poverty in 1997. Forty-one per cent of those (14.6 million) had incomes of less than half the poverty level. The definition of a poverty level income for a family of four in that year was $16,813 and below. (For the year 2000 it is projected to be $17,050.) While the number of people living at or below the poverty line has not changed in recent years, the number of those living in "extreme poverty" has increased by over three per cent. Forty per cent of persons living in poverty are children. In fact, the 1997 poverty rate for children is almost twice as high as the poverty rate for any other age group. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, two primary factors help account for the increase in poverty in recent years:
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