The condition or quality of being financially unsettled; in need; inferiority; inadequacy; scarcity, this is known as poverty. To the common folk, we know it just as being poor. Poverty in the prosperous United States was defined largely in terns of income, poor people were perceived as differing from the rest of society primarily in their lack of money. The apparent solution was to correct the income shortfall in a simple, efficient, and standardized manner. Yet decades of research and experience with antipoverty involves very complex, interrelated and sometimes intractable socioeconomic, family, an individual issues. The well being of people families and children has become a matter of especial interest since the implementation of poverty reforms in the mid-1990s. They have brought major policy and program chances to the social safety net, dealing with relationships between family structure and well being, the demographics of poverty, and policies to improve the community.
             The census shows that the percentage of Americans living in poverty has declined to 11.8 percent and that has been the lowest poverty rate in over 20 years. The rates are based on people who are 65 and over, African Americans, people living in the south, and families headed by single woman, this time these rates fell to their all time low. Then there is the child poverty rate, which has dropped to 16.9 percent, also its lowest level. Yet the new census also shows that median household income reaches a new high in 2000. This news seems primarily to reflect the effects of the lowest unemployment rate since 1969, as well as rising wages. The census shows that a reduction in poverty was concentrated in the nation's cities, occurring only in the cities that were distinguished from suburbs and non-metropolitan areas. The number of poor people nationally fell by 2.2 million, from 34.5 million to 32.3 million. Poverty rates remain high for certain gro...