The Odds of Falling into poverty are greater than you think.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/do-you-know-what-real-odds-are-falling-poverty?akid=14070.294211.73FQ_Y&rd=1&src=newsletter1052708&t=4

ECONOMY

The Real Odds of Falling Into Poverty Are Probably Higher Than You Think

According to a new poverty calculator, more than half of us will experience poverty in our lives, at least temporarily.

Nobody dreams of falling into poverty in the future. But for too many, poverty is a doom-filled nightmare that all too often comes true. To help people who don't have a realistic sense of just how financially vulnerable they are, sociologists Thomas Hirschl and Mark Rank of Cornell and Washington University respectively, have come up with the poverty probability calculator.

As the Washington Post reports, the calculator predicts the probability of falling into poverty based on age, education, race and marital status for five, 10 and 15 years into the future. The results are pretty sobering. For the more numerically inclined, Hirschl and Rank’s findings offer some interesting results