Land of Unequal Opportunity [Income Distribution and "Life Chances"]

New Orleans graphically showed what the Census report could not convey
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_39/b3952139.htm
Author: Tyson, Laura D'Andrea
Source: Business Week Online
Year: 2005

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Abstract:

Just days before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the U.S. Census Bureau published its annual report on income in America. The poverty rate increased in 2004 for the fourth year in a row, and 37 million Americans (12.7% of the population) were living in poverty -- 4 million more than in 2001, despite three years of economic recovery. Sadly, more than 15 million of these impoverished Americans, many of them children, lived in households headed by full-time workers. Not surprisingly, the Census results received scant media coverage. After all, it's certainly not news that many very poor people (often people of color) live in the richest nation on earth. Besides, mind-numbing statistics can't portray what a life of poverty means, anyway. But what the Census report could not convey, the pictures from flood-ravaged New Orleans did in graphic and heartrending ways.