Go around the country and you'll hear lots of frustration about just how difficult it is to get out of poverty ā and more importantly, how to stay out. The official U.S. poverty rate may have gone down to 14.5 percent in 2013 according to new numbers out Tuesday, but still more than 45 million were poor.
Employment is up, but many Americans still lack jobs that pay enough to meet basic needs. This has some people questioning whether current anti-poverty programs are doing enough.
Cara Russo, 34, of Gettysburg, Pa., is raising two daughters, ages 15 and 9, and until recently, could have been the poster child for one of the largest groups of poor Americans ā single women with children. According to the new poverty figures, 30.6 percent of such families are poor.
Russo no longer lives below the poverty line, which is less than $19,000 a year for a family of three. But she still struggles. She says the biggest challenge isn't being in poverty, but finding the way out. In the past, she has worked two jobs in an effort to earn enough.
[For more of this story, written by Pam Fessler, go to http://www.npr.org/2014/09/16/...-stay-out-of-poverty]
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