ABSTRACT
In recent years poverty in the United States has been on the increase. Table 1 provides an overview of the findings of the Bureau of the Census between 1959 and 1985. The data reveal that poverty declined from a high of almost 40 million poor in the early 1960s to a low of 23 million in 1973. But during the early 1980s the poverty count has expanded to over 30 million. In 1985 thirty-three million Americans, or 14.0 percent of the population, lived in poverty.
