12 or 14% of the population is below the official poverty line. But what is maybe more important to consider is there is another 40% that are called ALICE households - Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed - these are the people within about 150% of the poverty line, they're not technically poor, but they're working multiple low wage jobs, never knowing what shift they have next week. It's not an exaggeration at this point to say the majority of the US population is poor or near poor.