More Americans are living in poverty than at any time since records began more than 50 years ago, as a faltering recovery fails to lift incomes, the US Census Bureau has indicated.

In 2010, 46.2 million people fell below the poverty line, calculated as an annual income of $22,314 (€16,293) for a family of four and $11,139 for an individual. The figure is the largest since publication of estimates began in 1959.

“We are entering territory which looks like . . . before we even started fighting a war on poverty in the 1960s,” said Prof Alice O’Connor, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Separate figures showed that the richest Americans have escaped the worst of the recession’s impact. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)