The New York Times just released a good article about this issue which provides useful statistics concerning median income in America, number of Americans in poverty, including children, as well as the number of Americans without health care insurance and disparities in education. Since access to affordable health care and educational attainment levels are pretty well correlated with poverty and income is clearly a sign of economic poverty, I thought they would be useful for inclusion in this article. I think more information about the distribution of poverty. particularly within the individual states is important. I there is another good article on that as well. As for the discussion on poverty in America, there seems to be confusion over relative and absolute poverty. Perhaps this article can address that. Experts on poverty such as Jeff Sachs of Columbia and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen find these definitions and comparisons to be useful in their works The End of Poverty and Development as Freedom, respectively, so it is worth investigating. 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/world/africa/famine-hits-somalia-in-world-less-likely-to-intervene.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref;=world 

 http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/21748-1