Report: Latinos Stuck in Poverty As Economic Recovery Slows

Poverty levels in the United States remain stuck where they were a year ago, and Latinos continue to suffer disproportionately, according to a report released by the Census Bureau Tuesday.

That report shows that 46.5 million Americans lived in poverty in 2012, not statistically different from the 46.2 million Americans reported to be impoverished in 2011. The rate translates to 15 percent, or just more than one in seven Americans.

Latinos, by comparison, show a poverty rate of 25.6 percent, or just over one in four Latino Americans.

The poverty line in the report was defined as a household income of $23,492 for a family of four, and does not include assets (such as home ownership) in its calculations.

Of the ethnic/racial breakdowns in the study, Blacks were the hardest hit group, reporting a 27.2 percent rate of poverty. Whites, at 9.7 percent, showed the lowest poverty levels.

The report marks the sixth straight year that poverty levels have failed to improve, according to a report by Fox News.

"Everything's on hold, but at a bad level; poverty and income did not change much in 2012," Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in poverty, told Fox. "So child poverty is still too high and family income is still too low. The recession may be over, but try to tell that to these struggling families. Don't expect things to change until the American economy begins to generate more jobs."

Rates of unemployment are largely in keeping with the statistics in poverty. According to the United States Department of Labor, Hispanic peak unemployment during the recession was 13.1 percent, in November 2010.  White peak unemployment was 9.3% (October 2009), with African American unemployment hitting 16.7% in August of 2011.

The House of Representatives, meanwhile, is considering a bill that would cut food stamps by $4 billion annually. For the one in four Latinos currently living below the poverty line, such a legislative action could be disproportionately devastating.