Philadelphia has the highest rate of deep poverty – people with incomes below half of the poverty line – of any of the nation’s 10 most populous cities.<\/p>\n
The annual salary for a single person at half the poverty line is around $5,700; for a family of four, it’s around $11,700.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia’s deep-poverty rate is 12.9 percent, or around 200,000 people.<\/p>\n
Phoenix, Chicago, and Dallas are the nearest to Philadelphia, with deep-poverty rates of more than 10 percent.<\/p>\n
The numbers come from an examination of the 2009 through 2011 three-year estimate of the U.S. Census American Community Survey by The Inquirer and Temple University sociologist David Elesh.<\/p>\n
Of the 4,300,000 people living in the area around Philadelphia, there are nearly 160,000 in deep poverty – a rate of 3.6 percent – in Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, Delaware, Salem, Gloucester, Burlington, and Camden Counties as well as New Castle County, Del., and Cecil County, Md., Elesh’s analysis showed.<\/p>\n
Nationwide, more than 20 million people live in deep poverty, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.<\/p>\n