[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by marichiko

In the '50's the poverty rate was around 16%:

http://www.census.gov/income/histpov/hstpov2.lst

This source only goes back to 1959 where the rate was 22.4%. here are some of the stats you want. Scroll down the page and look for row "H". We start at 40-45% in 1937 at the tail of the depression, and poverty pretty much slowly drops until its low at 11.1% in 1973.