Nearly 45 million Americans in 21.1 million households — 83% of them below the poverty line — received food stamps in any given month, according to a November 2012 report by the Agriculture Department. The average monthly benefit per household was $284. This map, created by Calvin Metcalf, Kyle Box and Laura Evans from American Community Survey data, shades each county by the percentage of its population that relies on food stamps. (Check out nearly two dozen more of their ACS-based maps here.)

As Bruce Stokes, director of global economic attitudes at Pew Research’s Global Attitudes Project, noted recently, the United States stands out among advanced economies in how many people report having trouble feeding their families.

In the project’s most recent 39-country survey, nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) said they had trouble putting food on the table in the past 12 months. That was up from 16% in 2007, and a level of deprivation closer to that experienced by Indonesians or Brazilians than citizens of most other advanced nations.

As the Senate and House wrangle over a new farm bill, the food stamp program is likely to be cut — the only question is by how much. The recently passed Senate version of the massive bill would cut $4.1 billion from food stamps (formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) over 10 years, while a version pending in the House would cut the program by $20 billion over the same period.

A majority of Latinos believe that the economic downturn that began in 2007 has been harder on them than on any other group in America, according to a new national survey of Latino adults. Large shares report that they or someone in their household has been unemployed in the past year (59%); that their personal finances are in “only fair” or “poor” shape (75%); or that they are underwater on their mortgage (28% of Latino homeowners). However, Latinos are more upbeat than others about the prospect for better days ahead.

Read the full report for more results from the survey, including:

• Data on household wealth, unemployment and poverty rates for Latinos
• Comparisons between native-born Latinos and immigrants
• Latinos and upward mobility

 Related stories:

Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics

Childhood Poverty Among Hispanics Sets Record, Leads Nation

Hispanic Poverty Rate Highest In New Supplemental Census Measure

For more than a decade, the Census Bureau has been developing an alternative measure of poverty that is intended to better reflect the costs of basic living expenses as well as the resources people have to pay them. The bureau has just released results for 2010 from the alternative metric-called the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) — that uses a wider range of factors than the official federal measure to determine poverty status.

The additional data used in the alternative measure include medical expenses, tax credits, non-cash government benefits (such as food stamps, housing subsidies and school lunch programs), and cost-of-living adjustments for different areas. The alternative measure is not intended to replace the official poverty measure, at least for now. For the foreseeable future, the Census Bureau will report two sets of numbers.

Compared with the official measure, SPM figures released by the Census Bureau show a higher national poverty rate for 2010, 16.0%, compared with the official poverty rate of 15.2%

When the alternative measure is used, a greater share of Hispanics in 2010 lived in poverty than any other group. By contrast, when using the official poverty rate, a greater share of blacks in 2010 lived in poverty than Hispanics or any other group. Even so, no matter which measure is used, Hispanics make up nearly three-in-ten of the nation’s poor-28.6% under the official poverty measure and 28.7% under the SPM.

Read the full report for more detailed information on the Census figures.

Related Story: Childhood Poverty Among Hispanics Sets Record, Leads Nation

Large numbers of Americans enacted their own anti-poverty program in the depths of the Great Recession: They moved in with relatives. This helped fuel the largest increase in modern history in the number of Americans living in multi-generational households. From 2007 to 2009, the total spiked from 46.5 million to 51.4 million.

Living with extended family appears to be a financial lifeline for many. Although their adjusted incomes overall are lower, the poverty rate among people living in multi-generational households is substantially smaller than for those in other households — 11.5% vs. 14.6% in 2009, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

Moreover, the potential benefits of living in multi-generational households are greatest for the groups that have been most affected by the Great Recession. Among the unemployed, the poverty rate in 2009 was 17.5% for those living in multi-generational households, compared with 30.3% for those living in other households. Members of other economically vulnerable groups — young adults, Hispanics and blacks — who live in extended families also experience sharply lower poverty rates than those in other households.

Read the full report for more details, including:

• The demographics of multigenerational households

• The increase in young adults moving back in with families

• Trends for racial and ethnic groups

• Levels of household income and poverty rates

• How income is shared in multigenerational households

Related Pew Reports:

Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics

Childhood Poverty Among Hispanics Sets Record, Leads Nation

No Consensus About Whether Nation Is Divided Into ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-Nots’

Two Years of Economic Recovery: Women Lose Jobs, Men Find Them

How the Great Recession Has Changed Life in America

More Latino children are living in poverty — 6.1 million in 2010 — than children of any other racial or ethnic group. This marks the first time in U.S. history that the single largest group of poor children is not white. In 2010, 37.3% of poor children were Latino, 30.5% were white and 26.6% were black, according to an analysis of new data from the U.S. Census Bureau by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

This negative milestone for Hispanics is a product of their growing numbers, high birth rates and declining economic fortunes. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Hispanics today make up a record 16.3% of the total U.S. population. But they comprise an even larger share (23.1%) of the nation’s children, a disparity driven mainly by high birth rates among Hispanic immigrants.

Read the full report for discussion of the factors explaining this trend and how the recession reversed a pattern where more white children lived in poverty than Hispanic children prior to 2007. The report also explores the varied impact of the recession on different subgroups of Latino children.

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the nation’s poverty rate grew to 15.1% in 2010, an increase for the third year in a row, and that median household income declined in 2010. Pew Research Center reports have documented the impact of the Great Recession and shaky recovery on Americans’ wealth, work lives, personal finances and emotional well-being — finding, for example, that more than half of working Americans report a job-related hardship.

Read D’Vera Cohn’s story at pewsocialtrends.org on the latest Census Bureau findings and review of recent Pew Research Center reports that help put them in context, including:

• An analysis of the wealth gap between white and minority households
• How the recession has changed life in America
• The toll on the long-term unemployed
• The increase in children being raised by their grandparents
• The rising number of Americans living in intergenerational households

Unauthorized immigrants living in the United States are more geographically dispersed than in the past and are more likely than either U.S.-born residents or legal immigrants to live in a household with a spouse and children. In addition, a growing share of the children of unauthorized immigrant parents — 73% — were born in this country and are U.S. citizens.

These are among the key findings of a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, which builds on previous work estimating the size and growth of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population. A 2008 report by the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that 11.9 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the United States; it concluded that the undocumented immigrant population grew rapidly from 1990 to 2006 but has since stabilized. In this new analysis, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that the rapid growth of unauthorized immigrant workers also has halted; it finds that there were 8.3 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. labor force in March 2008.

Based on March 2008 data collected by the Census Bureau, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that unauthorized immigrants are 4% of the nation’s population and 5.4% of its workforce. Their children, both those who are unauthorized immigrants themselves and those who are U.S. citizens, make up 6.8% of the students enrolled in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools.

About three-quarters (76%) of the nation’s unauthorized immigrant population are Hispanics. The majority of undocumented immigrants (59%) are from Mexico, numbering 7 million. Significant regional sources of unauthorized immigrants include Asia (11%), Central America (11%), South America (7%), the Caribbean (4%) and the Middle East (less than 2%).

State Settlement Patterns

Unauthorized immigrants are spread more broadly than in the past into states where relatively few had settled two decades ago. This is especially true in Georgia, North Carolina and other southeastern states.

Long-time immigrant destinations, including Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas, also have retained their appeal to undocumented migrants.

However, growth of this population has slowed in California. Although the Golden State still houses the largest number of undocumented migrants — 2.7 million, or almost double the number in 1990 — it is home to a markedly smaller proportion of them. Its 42% share in 1990 declined to 22% in 2008.

Families and Children

Most unauthorized immigrant adults reside with immediate family members — spouses or children. About half of undocumented adults live with their own children under 18. Nearly half of unauthorized immigrant households (47%) consist of a couple with children. That is a greater share than for households of U.S.-born residents (21%) or legal immigrants (35%). This difference stems in large part from the relatively youthful composition of the unauthorized immigrant population.

Most children of unauthorized immigrants — 73% in 2008 — are U.S. citizens by birth. The number of U.S.-born children in mixed-status families (unauthorized immigrant parents and citizen children) has expanded rapidly in recent years, to 4 million in 2008 from 2.7 million in 2003. By contrast, the number of children who are unauthorized immigrants themselves (1.5 million in 2008) hardly changed in the five-year period and may have declined slightly since 2005.

Schools

Children of unauthorized immigrants are a growing share of students in kindergarten through grade 12. The Pew Hispanic Center, analyzing this group for the first time, estimates that 6.8% of K-12 students have at least one parent who was undocumented in 2008. In five states, about 10% or more of students are children of undocumented-immigrant parents. Most of these children, having been born in the United States, are U.S. citizens.

Labor

The nation’s labor force of 154 million people includes an estimated 8.3 million unauthorized immigrants. The 5.4% unauthorized-immigrant share of the labor force in 2008 rose rapidly from 4.3% in 2003, and has leveled off since 2007. The estimate for 2008 is not significantly different from 2007, so any assessment of recent trend is inconclusive because of the margin of error in these estimates.

Among states, the proportion of unauthorized workers varies widely: They constitute roughly 10% or more of the labor force in Arizona, California and Nevada, but less than 2.5% in most Midwest and Plains states.

They are especially likely to hold low-skilled jobs and their share of some of those occupations has grown. In 2008, 17% of construction workers were undocumented, an increase from 10% in 2003. One in four farmworkers is an unauthorized immigrant.

The estimates reported here are based mainly on data from March Current Population Surveys, conducted by the Census Bureau, through 2008, augmented with legal status assignments and adjusted to correct for undercount; some estimates are from the 2000 and 1990 Censuses. The Census Bureau asks people where they were born but does not ask people their immigration status, so the estimate of the size of the population is derived by employing a widely accepted methodology that has been used in previous reports on this topic.

Essentially, it subtracts the estimated legal-immigrant population from the total foreign-born population and treats the residual as an estimate of the unauthorized population. The information on characteristics of status groups is developed by assigning legal statuses to individual respondents who are likely to be legal or unauthorized using probabilistic methods designed to produce results agreeing with the residual estimates. [For more details, see Methodology appendix in the full report (PDF).]

Other Major Findings:

• Adult unauthorized immigrants are disproportionately likely to be poorly educated. Among unauthorized immigrants ages 25-64, 47% have less than a high school education. By contrast, only 8% of U.S. born residents ages 25-64 have not graduated from high school.
• An analysis of college attendance finds that among unauthorized immigrants ages 18 to 24 who have graduated from high school, half (49%) are in college or have attended college. The comparable figure for U.S.-born residents is 71%.
• The 2007 median household income of unauthorized immigrants was $36,000, well below the $50,000 median household income for U.S.-born residents. In contrast to other immigrants, undocumented immigrants do not attain markedly higher incomes the longer they live in the United States.
• A third of the children of unauthorized immigrants and a fifth of adult unauthorized immigrants lives in poverty. This is nearly double the poverty rate for children of U.S.-born parents (18%) or for U.S.-born adults (10%).
• More than half of adult unauthorized immigrants (59%) had no health insurance during all of 2007. Among their children, nearly half of those who are unauthorized immigrants (45%) were uninsured and 25% of those who were born in the U.S. were uninsured.

Read the full report at pewhispanic.org. Also find more facts about Mexican immigrants, the largest immigrant group in the United States.