By The Editors

The damage the Great Recession has done to the size and stability of the American middle class and the financial well-being of millions of individual Americans became more evident Friday when the Census Bureau released its annual report on poverty in the U.S.

The report presented a raft of gloomy statistics (PDF), mapping the extent of the paring of the middle class and the concomitant expansion of those living in poverty and those living with health insurance.

For example, it found that the number of individuals whose income falls below the poverty line increased to 43.6 million in 2009, a jump of 4 million from the previous year. One in seven Americans now live below the official poverty line of $10,830 for a single adult and $22,050 for a family of four. For children, the ratio is nearly one in five. The overall ratio is the highest since the recession of 1994.

The report stated that the number who have no health insurance increased to 16.7 percent, or 50.7 million people, from 15.4 percent, or 46.3 million in the year from 2008 to 2009.

Further, that data actually understates the extent of the decline many individuals and families have suffered.

The statistics would have been even more alarming but for the fact that the expanded unemployment insurance has kept an estimated 3 million jobless Americans above the official poverty line, and a dramatic rise since 2007 in the number of Americans living in multi-family arrangements – sharing homes with relatives or friends — has mitigated a steeper increase in the poverty rate, the Census report said.

Not surprisingly, black Americans have been disproportionately damaged by the overall rise in poverty. The percent of blacks living at or below the poverty line rose to 25.8 percent, just over a percent greater than in 2008. (That of whites rose to 9.4 percent, from 8.l6 percent. That of Latinos rose to 25.3 percent, from 23.2 percent. The Asian-American poverty rate remained unchanged at 12.5 percent.) And the median household income of blacks underwent a precipitous drop of more than 4 percent, to $32,584, far greater than any other group.