The report also showed median household income fell to $49,777 in 2009 from $50,112 in 2008, a drop that the Census Bureau characterized as "not statistically different."
Along with the rise in poverty, the report showed an increase in the ranks of the uninsured. The number of people without health coverage rose from 46.3 million in 2008 to 50.7 million in 2009.
The percentage of people covered by private insurance - 63.9 percent - was the lowest since 1987, the first year such data were collected.
People such as Brenda Stuart, 35, a North Philadelphia mother of four, don't need a government report to tell them times are tough.
After 19 years together, she and her boyfriend broke up last year because of too many stresses. He was a truck driver making $500 a week. Stuart was earning around $225 a week as the supervisor of a thrift store on Erie Avenue.
Not long after the boyfriend left, Stuart was laid off because of the economy. Recently, her unemployment insurance ran out.
The couple's comfortable apartment - with parquet floors in the living room and artwork on the walls - was once affordable, but is now too much for Stuart.
Rent is $773 a month. Stuart receives $743 a month in food stamps and gets $643 a month for her oldest son's Supplemental Security Income. The 17-year-old is autistic, and Stuart must bathe and shave him.
The yearly SSI-food stamps income is $16,632, well below the federal poverty rate for a family of five, $25,790.
The food is starting to run out, and Stuart admonishes her children, ages 2 to 17, to conserve. She said their hunger frightened her.
" 'There's no more money,' I tell them," she said. " 'You have to eat less.' "
