Clarification: The poverty rate was the same in 1993 as in 2010 -- 15.1%. The last time the rate was higher was 1983, when it reached 15.2%.

Original post: The U.S. poverty rate has risen to 15.1%, the highest since 1983, the U.S. Census Bureau reports.

About 46.2 million people, or nearly one in six, were in poverty in 2010, compared with 43.6 million, or 14.3%, in 2009.

The statistics, contained in the report, titled "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage: 2010," cover 2010, when U.S. unemployment averaged 9.6%, up from 9.3% the previous year.

Highlights:

Median household income for the nation was $49,400 in 2010, a decline of 2.3% from 2009, when inflation is figured in.

The 2010 official poverty rate for the nation was 15.1%, up from 14.3% in 2009, with 46.2 million people in poverty, an increase of 2.6 million since 2009.

The percentage of people without health insurance coverage in 2010, 16.3%, was not statistically different from the rate in 2009. The number of uninsured increased to 49.9 million in 2010 from 49 million in 2009.

READ: The bureau's presentation.

The bureau says that if Social Security payments were excluded from income, the number of people 65 and over in poverty would be 14 million higher in 2010.

Trudi Renwick, the bureau's chief of the Poverty Statistics Branch, says "the single most important factor" in the increase in poverty might be the increase in the number of people who did not work at all last year.

She says the number of people over 16 who did not work at least one week increased from 83.3 million in 2009 to 86.7 million last year.

The increase in the number of people without health insurance is due mostly to working-age Americans who lost employer-provided insurance in the weak economy. Main provisions of the health overhaul don't take effect until 2014.