Reading is Poorest City in U.S.

Just released Census Bureau figures show Pennsylvania’s poverty rate has climbed, rising to 13.4 percent in 2010 compared to 11.6 percent in 2007, when the recession first hit. Historical data show that poverty has been rising in Pennylvania since 2000.

Pennsylvania is also home to the poorest major city in America, when measured by the share of population living in poverty: 41 percent of Reading’s residents are poor. Flint, Mich. and Bloomington, Ind. were second and third.

The census data tracked how seven major cities in the Keystone State are doing: Disturbingly, a fifth or more of residents in our biggest cities live in poverty. The economic downturn is surely to blame, but Pennsylvania’s high taxes and onerous regulations make matters worse by inhibiting recovery and job creation, hurting the state’s poor.