Household Incomes Fell 6.4 Percent since 2007. Poverty Highest in Southern States!

As the Republican Tea Party pushes their ownership society, personal savings investments in Social Security, more "skin" (money) in the game for Medicare and a riskier deregulation stock market, we're supposed to invest in our future with stripped down family incomes.

There's no question Republicans want to shift the cost of retirement and medical care to the individual, balancing the federal budget in the process, but how is that possible or humane when household incomes continue to decline? 

Census: The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that in 2010, median household income declined … the poverty rate increased. Real median household income in the United States in 2010 was $49,445, a 2.3 percent decline from the 2009 median. Since 2007, the year before the most recent recession, real median household income has declined 6.4 percent and is 7.1 percent below the median household income peak that occurred prior to the 2001 recession in 1999.

As Midwest governors tried to duplicate the austere policies of our southern states, those states sank the fastest into poverty. What a roll model:

The South was the only region to show statistically significant increases in both the poverty rate and the number in poverty -- 16.9 percent and 19.1 million in 2010 -- up from 15.7 percent and 17.6 million in 2009. The poverty rate in 2010 was the highest since 1993. Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased by 2.6 percentage points.

The nation's official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 ─ the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. There were 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 ─ the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.

The number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 49.0 million in 2009 to 49.9 million in 2010. The Northeast and the Midwest had the lowest uninsured rates in 2010.

 Since 2007, the number of men working full time, year-round with earnings decreased by 6.6 million and the number of corresponding women declined by 2.8 million.