On the Economic Progress Institute’s website, there is a significant amount of data on poverty in Rhode Island. Most of which is probably pretty unsurprising. According to their statistics page, the 2010 United States census data found that roughly 14% of Rhode Island’s population is living under the poverty line.
Thats a little over 140,000 people living below the federal poverty line.
That makes Rhode Island the state in New England with the worst poverty rate.
To make matters worse, 43% of these 140,000 Rhode Islanders below the poverty line are considered to be living in poverty but in “deep poverty”. Translated into numbers that means a yearly income of 9,150 for a family of three. Thats mind-boggling. Yet this bleak picture is life for thousands of Rhode Islanders.
And if thats not depressing enough this statistics are made even worse by a recent study. The Rhode Island Standard of Need explored how much a family actually needed for basic expenses. What they found was that many families actually need two to three times the federal poverty line just to survive. That in Rhode Island a family of three needs to make roughly 50,000 dollars just to pay for housing, utilities, food. Yet the federal poverty line lies at around 20,000 dollars.
Put two and two together. People are perilously living on the edge, desperately hanging on to survival. Now more then ever before people need to get involved. Please next time you are considering what to do with your weekend, think about how many thousands of your neighbors could be struggling just to get by. Instead of going to the mall or the movies, donate some time or some food to your local social service organization.