"Growing" US economy leaves behind record numbers of severely poor

The McClatchy Washington Bureau published a story Thursday about how the number of poor Americans living in "severe poverty" - defined as an individual who makes less than $5080/year and a family of four with two children with a combined income of less than $9903 - has reached a 32-year high:

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years. These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975.

Other than Mexico and Russia, the article says, the US devotes the smallest percentage of its GDP to anti-poverty programs and, also excepting Mexico and Russia, these programs are the least effective. US States with the highest numbers of severely poor are as follows:

California - 1.9 million
Texas - 1.6 million
New York - 1.2 million
Florida - 943,670
Illinois - 681,786
Ohio - 657,415
Pennsylvania - 618,229
Michigan - 576,428
Georgia - 562,014
North Carolina - 523,511