INDICATORS

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PROGRESS REPORT - There are more Americans living in poverty today than
there are total people living in the state of California, the most
populous state in the nation. The number of poor Americans has grown by
five million in the past six years, while inequality has reached
historically high levels. In 2005, the richest one percent of Americans
had the largest share of the nation's income -- 19 percent -- since
1929, while the poorest 20 percent of Americans had only 3.4 percent of
the nation's income. Though the number of Americans in deep poverty has
climbed slowly but steadily in the past three decades, a study by the
American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that since 2000, "the
number of severely poor has grown 'more than any other segment of the
population.'" In 2005, 16 million people -- 5.4 percent of all Americans
-- had incomes below half the poverty line. The number of Americans
living in such extreme poverty grew by over three million between 2000
and 2005, and the share of poor people living in extreme poverty is now
greater than at any point in the last 32 years. Without urgent action,
these numbers are on course to continue growing. The federal minimum
wage has remained static for nearly a decade. At $5.15 an hour, it is at
its lowest level in real terms since 1956. The federal minimum wage was
once 50 percent of the average wage, but is now only 30 percent of that
wage. If Congress were to restore the minimum wage to 50 percent of the
average wage -- about $8.40 an hour in 2006 -- it would help over 4.5
million poor workers and nearly nine million other low-income workers.

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