"Poverty is still sky-high," said Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, a New York-based nonprofit that advocated for the impoverished. He said there were 3.3 million more Americans in poverty than in 2007, before the Great Recession. Meanwhile, Berg said, the Dow Jones industrial average has increased 13 percent since 2007, while the collective worth of the 400 wealthiest Americans increased to $2.4 trillion.