The following is by John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Read the full version of his column is at L&M Partnership .

The U.S. Census Bureau released new measures of poverty in November. According to the New York Times , “All told 100 million people – one in three Americans – either live in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.”

Or put another way:

“They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as just scrapping by.” ( New York Times , November 19, 2011 ).

The new approach taken by the U.S. Census Bureau gives us a much more realistic view of poverty in the U.S. than ever before. Generally, we think of the poor as those who live below the poverty line—that is, below $11,282 for an individual and below $24,343 for a family of four. But when we take into account both the benefits of government subsidies to the poor, which reduce the number slightly, and the impact of out-of-pocket expenses, including taxes and medical care, what we see is a broad expansion of poverty or “near poverty.” This definition includes families who live at up to four times the official poverty level, with a family income of $97,372.

What these numbers tell us is that more and more people—somewhere between one-third and one-half of the population—are somewhere between destitute and vulnerable, or just a few steps away from vulnerable. We begin to get a truer picture of the state of the nation when we add in other important factors such as:

• huge personal debt
•  lack of savings or assets
• the loss of trillions of dollars of value in home equity
• the loss of retirement savings because of a rocky stock market and early withdrawals needed to make ends meet.

Read the rest here.