Hannah Halbert, Liaison with Policy Matters Ohio, a non-profit policy research organization, says recently released Census Bureau data shows the state’s poverty rate stood at 15.1 percent in 2011.
She says that means more than 1.7 million Ohioans or 1 in 7 people lived in poverty last year.
Halbert says that’s the bad part of the numbers. The ugly part is that Ohioans are making less than they were several years ago.
Halbert says the data shows too clearly that Ohioans are continuing to struggle and that the gains being made in the private sector and at the top of the economy are not being widely felt.
But Halbert says one bright spot is that the number of uninsured Americans fell last year.
She says smart public policy works.
Halbert says overall, the data tells us that the programs we have in place at the federal level to combat poverty work and that we need to protect those programs.
For more information on the the census data, log on to policymattersohio.org/census-data-sept2012
