Poverty grew nationwide last year, but the increase was even greater in New York City, the Census Bureau will report on Thursday, suggesting that New York was being particularly hard hit by the aftermath of the recession.

From 2009 to 2010, 75,000 city residents were pushed into poverty, increasing the poor population to more than 1.6 million and raising the percentage of New Yorkers living below the official federal poverty line to 20.1 percent, the highest level since 2000. The 1.4-percentage-point annual increase in the poverty rate appeared to be the largest jump in nearly two decades.

Many New Yorkers were spared the worst of the recession, but the median household income has since shriveled to levels last seen in 1980, adjusted for inflation. Household income declined among almost all groups — by 5 percent over all since the beginning of the recession in 2007, to $48,743 in 2010.

Manhattan continued to have the biggest income gap of any county in the country, with the top fifth of earners (with an average income of $371,754) making nearly 38 times as much as the bottom fifth ($9,845).

Poverty among children under 18 rose 2.9 percentage points to 30 percent. The rate also increased for every other group except people 65 and older. Single mothers, blacks and adults lacking a high school diploma fared worst. Among Hispanic single mothers in the Bronx, the poverty rate was nearly 58 percent.

The bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey paints a disturbing portrait of the city. More New Yorkers depended on some form of public assistance than in 2009, and a record 1.8 million residents — nearly one in five households — are now relying on food stamps. Fewer people had health insurance, home ownership declined and housing values plunged; 44 percent of renters were diverting at least 35 percent of their income for housing.

Two worrisome numbers in the report raise questions about the recent response of the safety net. Poverty has risen especially fast among single mothers. More than 40 percent of households headed by women now live in poverty, which is defined as $17,568 for a family of three.

That is the first time since 1997 that figure has been so high. Analysts attribute the rise in part to changes in the welfare system, enacted in the mid-1990s, which make cash aid much harder to get. Those changes were credited with encouraging recipients to work in good times, but may leave them with less protection when jobs disappear.

… Poor people not only grew more numerous — 46.2 million — but also poorer. Among the poor, the share in deep poverty (defined as having less than half the income to escape poverty) rose to the highest level in 36 years: 44.3 percent.

The census data may overstate hardship by failing to count some benefits the needy receive, like tax credits and food stamps. But it also may also understate their needs by failing to adjust for health care expenses and variations in the cost of living.

About 20.5 million people are in deep poverty, with food stamps increasingly replacing cash aid as the safety net of last resort. More than 45 million people get food stamps, an increase of 64 percent since January 2008. About one in eight Americans, and one in four children, receives aid. Using an alternative definition of income, the Census Bureau found that food stamps lifted 3.9 million people above the poverty line.

Leading House Republicans on Thursday will take up the contentious debate over the National Labor Relations Board’s efforts to block Boeing from operating a $750 million aircraft assembly line in South Carolina instead of Washington State.

The Republican-controlled House is expected to approve an unusual bill that would bar the labor board from pursuing the board’s pending action against Boeing, which Republicans have been denouncing day after day.

… The Republican bill, called “The Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act,” would prohibit the labor board from “ordering any employer to close, relocate or transfer employment under any circumstances.”

… Even in a troubled economy, it seems, some parents of means are willing to spend significant (if not eye-popping) sums on playhouses for their children that also function as a kind of backyard installation art.

There are a number of companies and independent craftsmen that make high-end playhouses, which can cost as much as $200,000, and come in a variety of styles, including replicas of real houses… and more-fantastical creations like pirate ships, treetop hideouts and fairy tale cottages. And many of these manufacturers report that despite the economic downturn, they are as busy as ever.

Barbara Butler, an artist and playhouse builder in San Francisco, said her sales are up 40 percent this year, and she has twice as many future commissions lined up as she did this time last year. Not only that, but the average price of the structures she is being hired to build has more than doubled, from $26,000 to $54,000.

… “We get a lot of calls this time of year, when the weather gets warm and people want to get their kids outside,” said Patty Toner, vice president for sales for Lilliput Play Homes, in Finleyville, Pa., a company that sells playhouses on what might be considered the low end of the scale: between $4,000 and $50,000, depending on the style and degree of customization. Best sellers include a two-story Colonial-style house with a balcony and colonnaded porch, and a miniature medieval castle with turrets and secret passages.

… Even with the economy in a funk and many Americans pulling back on spending, the rich are again buying designer clothing, luxury cars and about anything that catches their fancy. Luxury goods stores, which fared much worse than other retailers in the recession, are more than recovering — they are zooming. Many high-end businesses are even able to mark up, rather than discount, items to attract customers who equate quality with price.

The rich do not spend quite as they did in the free-wheeling period before the recession, but they are closer to that level…. What changed? Mostly, the stock market, retailers and analysts said, as well as a good bit of shopping psychology. Even with the sharp drop in stocks over the last week, the Dow Jones is up about 80 percent from its low in March 2009. And with the overall economy nowhere near its recession lows, buying nice, expensive things is back in vogue for people who can afford it.

… While the free spending of the affluent may not be of much comfort to people who are out of jobs or out of cash, the rich may contribute disproportionately to the overall economic recovery.

“This group is key because the top 5 percent of income earners accounts for about one-third of spending, and the top 20 percent accounts for close to 60 percent of spending,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “That was key to why we suffered such a bad recession — their spending fell very sharply.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, in terms—the importance of assessing the wealth gap versus the income gap, because obviously the income gap is a year-to-year situation, whereas the wealth gap is really sort of the accumulation of all the disparities of generations, really, whether it’s—you could be earning a lot of money as an African American, but if you have discriminatory lending rates or other matters, you’re still being penalized, subsequently. So, but here we have a situation where the Obama presidency was supposed to, for many people, bring in a post-racial America, where there was a greater sense of equality among the races, and yet we’re seeing this enormous step backward. Your sense of what it means for this concept of a post-racial America?

RODERICK HARRISON: It means that, clearly, any hopes or aspirations, particularly based solely on Obama’s election, that we had reached some kind of post-racial state were, you know, close to delusional. The socioeconomic realities have not changed on the ground. And this report is pointing to just how much the socioeconomic inequalities have been exacerbated by the recession and the poor economy. It has hit, as it historically does, lower-income minorities, less-educated populations, much more heavily than others. And this report has shown very graphically the consequences of this. So any—I think the sense that perhaps the willingness to elect the first black president does suggest some degree of importantry of moving beyond race in our society, but clearly, that has—doesn’t change the kind of socioeconomic realities that are the consequence of centuries and decades of inequality.

… We’ve been seeing now for decades increases in inequalities in income. And this is—there are many factors in that, including the incredibly—the incredible increases in the ratio of the incomes of executives and managers to workers within firms. But also, some of it is driven by the growth of the very good incomes of families with two college-educated workers and the stagnation of wages amongst males and a very slow growth amongst females and very slow growth amongst people with less than a college education. So, these things have contributed to the gap. And one would expect that since you do need to make sufficient income to be able to have savings that you can invest, whether it’s in savings accounts or stocks, bonds, etc., one would expect the increase in income inequality to gradually produce increases in wealth inequality, as well. But clearly, the recession has, just in a few short years, thrown us into a truly different world. The black and Hispanic income levels, you mentioned, wiped out 20 years of gains; they’re back to where they were in 1993, approximately.

… On Thursday Attorney General Eric Holder responded to the findings, calling the report a “wake-up call,” Education Week reported…. As a response to the report, Education Week reported, the Departments of Justice and Education are starting the Supportive School Discipline Initiative, a joint program to encourage schools to use alternative measures to deal with disciplinary programs before calling police officers.

… “Maintaining safe and supportive school climates is absolutely critical, and we are concerned about the rising rates and disparities in discipline in our nation’s schools,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement last week. Duncan said, as many critics of zero-tolerance policies have argued over the years, that harsh school discipline doesn’t deter bad behavior, it discourages students from staying in school and makes the work of educating U.S. kids that much harder.

Hispanic families accounted for the largest single decline in wealth of any ethnic and racial group in the country during the recession, according to a study published Tuesday by the Pew Foundation.

The study, which used data collected by the Census Bureau, found that the median wealth of Hispanic households fell by 66 percent from 2005 to 2009. By contrast, the median wealth of whites fell by just 16 percent over the same period. African Americans saw their wealth drop by 53 percent. Asians also saw a big decline, with household wealth dropping 54 percent.

… Median wealth of whites is now 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, double the already marked disparities that had prevailed in the decades before the recent recession, the study found.

… The share of Americans with no wealth at all rose sharply during the recession. A third of Hispanics had zero or negative net worth in 2009, up from 23 percent in 2005. For blacks, the portion rose to 35 percent from 29 percent, and for whites, it rose to 15 percent from 11 percent.

About a quarter of all black and Hispanic households owned nothing but a car in 2009. Just 6 percent of whites and 8 percent of Asians were in that situation.

Whites were less affected by the crisis, largely because their wealth flowed from assets other than housing, like stocks. A third of whites owned stocks and mutual funds in 2005, compared with 8 percent of Hispanics and 9 percent of blacks.

There are a lot of kids who don’t think they deserve to be punished. But a lot of kids don’t have a cost-analysis report that details why it’s damaging to students and the public school systems in which they’re taught. Last week, over 75 high school students, parents, teachers and activists rallied at the Chicago Public Schools headquarters to present their findings and call for an end to the district’s overuse of harsh punitive measures.

The cost-analysis, compiled by the student group Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE), details the harmful effects that the Chicago Public School system’s zero tolerance disciplinary polices have on student achievement and the enormous costs they impose on taxpayers. Despite an estimated $612 million budget shortfall for 2012, last year the city’s public school system allocated $51.4 million for security guards. The report contrasts this with the comparatively meager $3.5 million that was allocated towards school-based college and career coaches.

… VOYCE and those who rallied last week are demanding to meet with Chicago Public School officials to help create a new student disciplinary policy that would emphasize counselors and prevention-based strategies rather than security officers and punishments. The group points out that last year, CPS’ Office of Safety and Security had a budget 48 times larger than that of the Office of Student Support and Engagement and 84 times larger than what the Office of Teaching and Learning could spend. “Failed Policies, Broken Futures” goes beyond the immediate savings that eliminating harsh punishments can provide. It marks that students who have been arrested are 50 percent more likely to drop out of school, and that based on the cost of each lost graduate, Chicago taxpayers will face around $240 million in long-term costs. It emphasizes that even cutting the annual number of arrests in half could produce huge economic benefits for the city each year.