Mitt Romney has taken a lot of criticism for saying he wasn't "concerned about the very poor" in a post-Florida primary victory interview last week. But some middle-class Americans agree with Romney's sentiment. Kate, a Takeaway listener and delivery driver from Maryland, is frustrated with the very poor, who she believes abuse the system and take opportunities away from people like her.

Poverty and homelessness disproportionately effects those who have served in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and National Guard. While the reasons are diverse — the lack of perceived skills by civilian employers, physical and psychological injuries sustained during service, a sluggish economy — the reality is undeniable: veterans make up only ten percent of the population, yet seven percent of veterans live in poverty and one in five are homeless. Of those that have served, the group hardest hit have been National Guard veterans. 

On Tuesday evening following his Floriday primary victory, Mitt Romney told Soledad O'Brien that, "I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair I'll fix it." The following day, The Takeaway followed up with a segment about the changing face of poverty in America. As part of a continuing conversation about this topic, Ron Robinson joins the program. Robinson is a homeless father of twins who lost his job at AT&T in 2010, and has been moving his family in and out of homeless shelters in Detroit, Michigan ever since. Alex Kotlowitz, journalist, author of the book "There Are No Children Here," and producer of "The Interrupters" also addresses the subject. 

Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley have been outspoken critics of income inequality in America. The late aughts were shaped by the subprime mortgage crisis, subsequent stock market crash, international debt problems, and record levels of long-term unemployment. Between 2006 and 2010, there was a 27 percent increase of people living in poverty across the U.S. And despite signs of recovery, growth has been slow and decidedly uneven with Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and California hovering at 12 percent or higher unemployment rates.

In September, artist and graphic designer Megan Flood came on The Takeaway to discuss her senior project at the University of Michigan. Through audio and photographs, Living Without Doorknobs documents life in an Ann Arbor, Michigan homeless tent community called Camp Take Notice. One of the homeless men living in Camp Take Notice, Joe Gill, was a major focus of Flood's work, and his photographs of the tent community became an integral part of her project.

It's the day before Thanksgiving and many of us will be spending the day preparing for our holiday feast. But for millions of Americans the tables may be more bare this year. With the economy still weak, and federal and state budgets for charity services cut, many local food banks and food pantries are seeing an increase in demand. But they don't have enough food on their shelves to keep up.

The latest Census data reports that nearly 46.2 million Americans, about 1 in 15, are living in poverty. According to a new Pew poll, the face of American poverty has shifted dramatically. For the first time in U.S. history, the percent of Hispanics living in poverty outpaces African Americans with 28.2 percent of Latinos under the poverty line compared to 25.4 percent of blacks. In fact, Latinos overall were hit the hardest by the Great Recession which technically ended in 2009.

When the Census Bureau announced that a record number of Americans live below the poverty line it did so using an old metric that has not been changed, apart from adjustments for inflation, since it was hastily conceived in 1963. Starting Monday, the Census Bureau will use a new metric — taking into account such federal assistance like food stamps and such costs as rent, medical and child care, for the first time.

One in six Americans are poor, which means 50 million people are living in poverty in the United States. Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley, hosts of PRI's "Smiley and West," went on "The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience," an 18-city tour of the United States in August, to speak with Americans living in poverty and get a sense of what it's like to be poor in America today. This week, PBS will air the first of five episodes of "The Poverty Tour."

All this week, we've talked about the startling implications behind new Census data showing that the poverty rate in America is now at its highest level since 1983. One in six Americans now live below the poverty line. Yesterday, a listener named Megan Flood tweeted at us to tell us about her senior thesis project on poverty and homelessness she completed while at the University of Michigan. Flood spent six months conducting weekly interviews with Jospeh Gill, a newly homeless man living in a tent city in Ann Arbor.

As we've watched the economic crisis unfold in Greece this year, and Greek citizens taking to the streets to protest the financial situation there, we've wondered why the same thing hasn't happened in America. Why haven’t we heard more outrage from the increasingly squeezed American people?

New Census numbers show that the U.S. has reached its worst level of poverty since 1983. About 15 percent of Americans live beneath the poverty line. That means that almost 46 million Americans do not earn $11,100 dollars a year as a single person; or, that they live in a family of four that makes under $22,314. The numbers beg the question: are the poor being forgotten in this country?

New Census data reveals that poverty in America is at its worst level in three decades. We asked you, does America still care about its poor? We received many responses, including this one, from Seth in New Jersey:

"The United States government does not care about its poor, and that's because they don't make campaign contributions."

Millions of children in the U.S. are covered by Medicaid and should receive the same access to health care as families with private insurance. But a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests those families are finding it harder to make appointments with doctors and are waiting longer for care. The study carried out by the University of Pennsylvania is the first of its kind and looked at the experiences of parents making appointments at specialty clinics in Cook County, Ill. With Medicaid facing a reduction in funding the question of access to care is more important than ever.

It's no secret that with a growing population and a shrinking place to put us all, many are anticipating a global food crisis in the near future — one that brings the scarcity of sustenance already present in poverty-stricken nations to all nations. And a hot commodity is also a high-priced one. Lester Brown, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, has a new story detailing what may prove the coming food crisis in the 21st century.

Poverty continues to raise questions for economists, who have differing viewpoints on its source and its solution. A new book out by two MIT Economists moves away from the question of why poverty toward looking at how poor people behave and survive. They are asking questions like, "why would a man in Morocco, who doesn’t have enough to eat, buy at television set?" and "Does having lots of children make you poorer?"

Over 249 million Americans live on the three percent of land that constitutes our cities. More than half of America’s income is earned in 22 metropolitan areas. And people live longer in New York City than anywhere else in the U.S. That being said, our nation continues to grapple with negative perceptions about cities. Images of loud, dirty, noisy, graffiti and crime-ridden urban wastelands persist. Economist Ed Glaeser wants to change that. He’s convinced that cities make us better, and that the proof can be seen everywhere from Minneapolis to Shanghai.

This month, minimum wage workers in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington will see paycheck increases of three to 12 cents per hour. For those earning low wages, increases do help with living expenses, but is such a small raise really noticeable? We speak with Ashley Kinsinger, who has worked for minimum wage as a supermarket cashier, and Beth Kobliner, work contributor for The Takeaway about the issue.

On January 1, about 650,000 minimum wage workers in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington saw their paychecks rise by up to 12 cents per hour. Who makes the minimum wage these days, and is it enough to live on?

What does it mean to be poor in America? For years, the country has had a fairly firm answer; in 2010, the federal government maintains the poverty line at an income of about $21,750 for a family of four. But, if you do the math, you'll likely come up with an inescapable question: how can a family really subsist in America on even twice that amount?