As NJ poor get poorer, rich get MUCH richer

Legal Services of New Jersey’s (aka Legal Aid) Poverty Research Institute income disparity study

entitled “Income Inequality in New Jersey: The Growing Divide and Its Consequences,” found the distribution of income between 2000 and the end of 2009 was heavily one-sided, with more than three quarters of the income gains going to the well-to-do in just 20 percent of the state’s households. That left little for everyone else, and some backtracked.

Significantly, more than a quarter of the gains went to just the top or richest one percent of the populace – an estimated 75,000 people living in households with incomes of at least $570,000. On the other end, those in the 40 percent of the state’s households with incomes under $34,300 – roughly 3 million people – actually saw their incomes take a hit during the decade.

… despite a brief dip in the income inequality barometer during the Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009, the gap between the haves and have-nots once again widened in 2010. And there already are forecasts by economic experts that, when the Census figures for 2011 are released in a few months, poverty will have increased in the nation to the highest level in some 50 years.

… Legal Services president Melville D. Miller, Jr., announced that the non-profit organization will do annual studies of the issue and release such “inequality audits” to the public.

How Youth are affected

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2012 KIDS COUNT® Data Book puts New Jersey in 19th place nationally in Economic wellness, a category which takes into account the

…percentage of children in poverty, median family income and percentage of households spending a large part of income on rent.

The result “is an uphill battle” for the state’s youth, says Cecilia Zalkind, executive director of Newark-based Advocates for Children of New Jersey. ACNJ compiles statistics by county, while the Annie E. Casey Foundation measures numbers statewide for the Kids Count report…

“Our sense is that low-income families are really struggling,” Zalkind adds. “They’re having a much harder time bouncing back (from the recession) than the rest of the state.”

In 2010, nearly one-third of the state’s children lived in a low-income household, an increase of 14 percent from 2006, according to Census figures, the primary source of data for the Kids Count report. The number of children living in a family where no parent had regular, full-time employment was 27 percent, up from 25 percent in 2009.

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