This is Part One in a series examining the findings from and implications of recently released Census Data.

In mid-July of this year, a majority of Senate Democrats finally succeeded in their fourth attempt to break a Republican filibuster (also supported by Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE)) on a bill to extend unemployment benefits to those in need. On July 21st, President Obama signed a 26-week extension of unemployment benefits into law. That extension, it is now clear, was a veritable lifeline for the millions of Americans who–out of work, facing bleak job prospects, and at the end of their benefits rope–remain in danger of falling into poverty and were saved from it in official terms only by sustained unemployment benefits. 

Millions of others, however, did cross the line. According to new data from the United States Census Bureau released on Thursday, the share of Americans living below the poverty line in 2009 soared to the highest level it has been in half a century. Four million more Americans fell below the poverty line in 2009 than were classified as such in 2008, rising to a total of 44 million fellow citizens or one in seven residents of our country living in poverty.  Millions more stand right on the threshold of poverty, saved by pooling resources and moving in with family members.  In fact, according to one estimate, without unemployment benefits, there would have been 3.3 million more people living in poverty. Those on the razor’s edge are not counted as “living in poverty,” but this can only be seen small comfort if any at all in an age when a few dollars here or there may make the difference in statistics but not in the realities of the struggle of daily life.

And that struggle is increasingly faced by women. The new census data also show that women, increasingly, are the majority standing on the wrong side of the poverty line.

According to analysis of the new Census data by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), the poverty rate among women rose to 13.9 percent last year, the highest rate in 15 years.

“Over 16.4 million women were living in poverty,” notes a press release by NWLC “including nearly 7 million women in extreme poverty, with incomes below half of the federal poverty line.”

Poverty among men also rose in 2009, to 10.5 percent from 9.6 percent in 2008, but the poverty rate for men remained substantially lower than that among women, a longstanding imbalance that appears only to become increasingly intractable.

Even among women, some groups are better off than others. The poverty rate rose faster among women of color, who have long been disproportionately represented among the poor, than for their white counterparts.  Nearly one in four African-American women (24.6 percent compared to 23.3 percent in 2008) are now living below the poverty line. Poverty among Hispanic women increased from 22.3 percent in 2008 to 23.8 percent last year.

Female-headed households are particularly vulnerable to poverty: Nearly four in ten single mothers (38.5 percent) lived in poverty in 2009, up from 37.2 percent in 2008. It is not surprising, therefore that an increasing number of children are also now living in poverty.  In 2009, 1.4 million children fell below the poverty line, bringing the number of poor children in the United States to 15.4 million. Over half of poor children lived with single mothers in 2009 and children now represent 35 percent of all those living in poverty in the United States.

There was one bright spot, notes NWLC: the poverty rate declined for older Americans, including women 65 and older living alone. Poverty among elderly women living alone dropped to 17 percent in 2009 from 18.9 percent in 2008. But without Social Security benefits (listen up Alan Simpson), 14 million more older Americans would be living in poverty.

One reason poverty among women is rising is that even when they are employed, they are likely to make less money than men. The wage gap between median earnings for men and women remained as wide in 2009 as in 2008, according to NWLC. Women working full-time, year-round in 2009 were paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts.

“The wage gap makes it more difficult for families relying on women’s wages to achieve and maintain economic security,” said NWLC Co-President, Marcia D. Greenberger. 

Despite this picture, there are things that can be done now to ameliorate the increasingly dire conditions in which more and more Americans find themselves living

One step, notes Greenberger, is for “the Senate [to] pass the Paycheck Fairness Act in the current session to close the wage gap and secure fair pay for women.”

Another is to maintain tax credits focused on low-income workers and the poor. “One of the key questions,” said Joan Entmacher, Vice President and Director of Family Economic Security at NWLC, “is what Congress is going to do about tax cuts at end of this year.”

“In addition to Bush era tax cuts, some of which benefit the middle class and some of which benefit the wealthy, there are child care tax credits and income tax credits included in the stimulus plan that greatly assist the poor.”

Education, child care, and other tax credits that benefit both the middle class and low-income earners, and the earned-income tax credit for low-income workers have helped keep some families afloat. 

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), passed in 2009, expanded the number of low-income families qualifying for a child tax credit of up to $1,000 per child. ARRA also increased the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for families with three or more children and some families headed by married couples.

To give you an example of the practical implications of these tax credits for poor families, and especially women-headed households with children, look at Minnesota. Approximately 102,000 Minnesota households have benefited from expanded EITC credits, notes MinnesotaBudgetBites.org, bringing an additional $51 million to Minnesota working families. And approximately 156,000 Minnesota children and their families benefited from the expanded Child Tax Credit, which brought an additional $126 million to Minnesota families.

“These improvements help struggling Minnesota families to make ends meet,” writes Steve Francisco of MinnesotaBudgetBites.org.

They provide powerful incentives that promote work, self-reliance and parental responsibility.

But these tax credits will expire at the end of 2010 unless Congress acts to extend them.

Yet even as the Census data underscore the dire straits in which many people find themselves, Congress and the Administration continue to wrangle on the tax issue. The Obama Administration and many Democrats in Congress want to rescind the tax breaks for those making $250,000 or more while maintaining tax credits for low-income people and tax cuts for the middle class. 

But leading Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) are not supporting this plan.  In fact, McConnell’s plan calls for maintaining tax cuts “prior to the Recovery Act,” but not those included in it.  Translation: He proposes to maintain the Bush tax cuts but eliminate the expansions in the recovery act.

Some find this infuriating.

“When over 16 million women are struggling to pull themselves and their families out of poverty, it’s insulting for Congress to consider spending hundreds of billions of dollars to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans,” said NWLC Co-President Nancy Duff Campbell. “Congress should focus on measures to create jobs and help hard-pressed families.”

“These tax credits are worth billions of dollars for women and kids,” adds Entmacher.

“We need to make them a priority instead of just trying to figure out how to make things less expensive for millionaires. It’s a choice between focusing on low- and middle-income families or adding nearly a trillion dollars to the deficit to give tax cuts to the very wealthy.”

Entmacher also points to an extension of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a program for which an additional $5 billion in emergency funding was allocated  by ARRA.  TANF is intended to help states serve more families seeking employment opportunities and other forms of assistance during the economic downturn. The availability of these funds has been praised by such conservative stalwarts as Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who has used the money in his state to provide wage subsidies to employers who hire new workers. In other states, these funds have been used to provide one-time benefits to victims of domestic violence or help families prevent eviction. These funds will expire at the end of September however, unless Congress acts to replenish them for another year.  

Sustained funding is also needed for Head Start and child care assistance programs, increased funds for which were also originally included in the recovery act, but now also need to be replenished.  Likewise additional funds allocated to child support enforcement will soon disappear without further action, and if they do, this will cost families two million dollars per year, according to NWLC’s Entmacher.  President Obama has included these funds in his budget, key Senators, such as Max Baucus (D-MT) support extending these credits for lower and middle-income families, and the House Ways and Means committee has advanced legislation to support extending these programs.

Many key organizations and leaders support and are working on these issues, notes Entmacher.  “But there are two challenges.  One is that as we have seen with unemployment benefits, a minority in the Senate can run out the clock.  And that clock is itself fast running out in this session of Congress.”

“Action for women and familes is needed soon,” she says.

[Part 2 will examine Census findings on women and health care].