Busy day, so I won’t have much time to post. But I should weigh in on the Census report, many of whose key findings are summarized in this CBPP post.

Crucially, of course, the report documents the vast human damage being inflicted by a weak economy. It also documents the ways in which safety-net programs have at least mitigated that damage — notably, uninsurance among children has actually fallen thanks to SCHIP and Medicaid, unemployment insurance has literally kept millions above the poverty line, and the early features of the Affordable Care Act have helped hundreds of thousands of young adults retain insurance. We’ll have a fuller read on this, with the effects of food stamps and other in-kind benefits, next month.

But what struck me is the extent to which the suffering didn’t begin with the slump — many measures of pain were rising right through the “Bush boom”, and have merely continued that rise.

Exhibit 1 is “deep poverty”, people living below 50 percent of the poverty line:

Exhibit 2 is real income of non-elderly households:

And Exhibit 3 is employment-based health insurance, whose decline has luckily been offset by public provision:

Things were getting worse for lots of Americans even before the slump. Now they’re getting worse faster.