NEW YORK - Census figures indicate that the number of New Yorkers living in poverty topped three million in 2009; that's a nine percent increase in one year. But local agencies say the problem is actually a lot bigger.

Nancy Cohan, team director with the Family and Children's Association, says to forget about the poverty line in suburbs like Long Island, where middle-income people are also unable to stay afloat, and the helping agencies are seeing people they've never served before. She says agencies that normally run short of funds at year's end won't make it that far in 2010.

"We're broke now, we've been out of money since, like, early summer because people just can't afford to pay their bills. They've used up all their savings, they went into their retirement, they can't find work - particularly folks that are a little bit older, like, in their 50s."

Cohan says the Family and Children's Association was one of dozens of groups that worked to ensure that the Census Bureau got an accurate count, because Census numbers affect both the number of New York representatives in Congress and the amount of federal dollars that flow to the needy.

Gwen O'Shea with the Health and Welfare Council of Long Island says the Census and many federal safety net programs define a New York family as 'poor' if they live on less than $22,000 a year, although recent studies show it costs more than three times that to get by here. That leaves a big gap.

"For Long Island, we see about 45 percent of our families that are in that 'catching' area. So, it means that they're not qualifying for any of these safety-net programs that the federal government may have, but they're not making enough money to make ends meet."

Cohan says the Family and Children's Association limits the help they give to families to one time per year. Now in many cases, they can't even offer that much, because the demand is so great.

"We're talking about people who don't have food for their kids. You're looking at people that are standing there with two kids, one in a stroller, and they're in tears, because they really don't know what they're going to do, where they're going to sleep tonight."


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A version of this report originally appeared on The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Emily Scott for Arkansas News Service for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

The 2020 U.S. Census results showed racial and ethnic diversity of rural populations, including in Arkansas, has grown nearly 20% over the last 10 years.

Researchers predict it could have big implications for resources such as schools and social services. A report from the University of New Hampshire's Carsey School of Public Policy found diversity is increasing both because minority populations are growing and because the non-Hispanic white population is diminishing.

Daniel Lichter, professor emeritus at Cornell University and one of the report's authors, said the diverse population in rural America is growing most among children younger than 18.

"Built into our age structure of rural America is a pattern of continuing racial diversity," Lichter explained. "As an older Baby Boom generation dies off, [they] are succeeded by racial minority groups that are now entering young adulthood, the period of family formation."

Rural America remains predominantly non-Hispanic white at 76% of its population, a 5% decline over the last decade. Between 2010 and 2020, Arkansas saw a 38% increase in people identifying as Hispanic or Latino.

Ken Johnson, demographer and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire and a co-author of the report, said while new immigrant and ethnic groups potentially could serve as an economic lifeline to small towns, it also presents a challenge for local school districts and other social services in these already under-resourced communities.

"They're going to have to provide a more diverse body of teaching," Johnson pointed out. "They're going to have to make sure that material is available in languages other than English, not just for the children but for their parents who are going to have to work with them to teach them at home."

The researchers added the growth can help support a dwindling labor force in these communities and also help create a more inclusive society. The ethnic and racial diversity growth in the U.S. has not been evenly distributed nationwide. It is reflected in the fact some counties in each region of the country are becoming more diverse, while others have seen little change in diversity.

Kenneth M. Johnson and Daniel T. Lichter wrote a version of this story for The Daily Yonder.

A new report found Texas likely undercounted the number of people who actually live in the state when gathering information for the 2020 census.

The census guides where federal money -- some $1.5 trillion -- is spent based on population. Texas was one of six states showing an undercount, while eight states showed an overcount.

Thomas Wolf, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the new data will not change the population numbers used for Congressional reapportionment or redistricting, but can have a direct effect on people's well-being.

"If your state goes undercounted, there's a risk that you'll end up with less funding than you should for things like education, health care, food assistance, highways," Wolf outlined. "Basically, the whole infrastructure of your community and state."

Before the census, advocates warned of a significant undercount in the Latino population after the Trump administration tried to add a question about citizenship to the census. Although the question eventually was excluded, experts say it could have triggered lower response rates from Latinos.

California, the most populous U.S. state, did not have a significant population undercount in the census, but Wolf noted it also spent $187 million in supplemental census outreach, while Texas declined to spend any money on outreach.

"The decision itself, regardless of the motivation, is sort of penny wise/pound-foolish," Wolf remarked. "Yes, you save money from not investing in census outreach, but what you get in return is an undercount that then deprives you of millions of federal dollars."

According to the Urban Institute, if the residents of Texas had been counted accurately in 2020, the state would have received at least $247 million more in 2021 federal Medicaid reimbursements. Other states among the top six likely undercounting their population include Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi and Tennessee.

A new report found the 2020 census significantly undercounted the Latino population nationwide, by almost 5%, more than three times the undercount from the 2010 census.

By establishing population data, the census guides where federal dollars are spent.

Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the undercount could mean less money for dozens of programs benefiting children and young adults in Nevada, including Medicaid and food assistance.

"The federal funding implicates things like education, child care services, transportation, parks and health care," Saenz outlined. "There isn't really a federal program or even state and local decision-making that is not going to be affected by an undercount in the census."

An analysis from the Urban Institute last winter projected an undercount of more than 20,000 people of all races statewide, including a slight overcount of white residents and a net undercount of 2.19% for Hispanics living in Nevada.

Before the census, advocates warned of a significant undercount in the Latino population after the Trump administration tried to add a question about citizenship to the census.

Saenz believes the move was designed to trigger lower response rates, specifically from the Latino community.

"And even though many of those efforts were stopped in court, the public attention to them clearly had an impact," Saenz observed. "That means that the Latino community will suffer as a result of that undercount over the course of the next decade."

The pandemic made it much harder to obtain an accurate count, because so many people had to move after losing their jobs. Children, particularly those from low-income families who tend to be renters, have traditionally been the hardest for census-takers to count.