About 8 million people have slipped into poverty since May, according to a new report from researchers at the Center on Poverty & Social Policy at Columbia University.
The increase in poverty reverses the dynamics seen in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when the $2 trillion Cares Act passed helped lift millions of people out of poverty. The massive federal support provided by the legislation – including $1,200 stimulus checks and $600 per week in extra unemployment benefits, among other things – has now largely dried up, leaving more people in poverty than before the pandemic began.
“The Cares Act was unusually successful, but now it’s gone, and a lot more people are poor,” Zachary Parolin, an author of the Columbia report, told The New York Times.
Using a different definition of poverty, a separate report from researchers from the University of Chicago and Notre Dame University found that poverty has grown by 6 million in the last three months, the Times said.
