Unlike about three-fourths of the rest of the country, Temple is seeing a stable, not growing, rate of poverty this decade, according to data just released by the Census Bureau.

For 70 percent of the places in the United States with at least 20,000 people, the poverty rate has risen since 1999, the bureau reported.

In Temple, the rate has been about 14 percent since the year 2000.

That rate is below the state rate.

One city with the largest increase of those living in poverty was Kinston, N.C., where the rate went from 23 percent in 1999 to 36.6 percent last year.

The report was a result of the American Community Survey, a cutting-edge Census Bureau effort to bridge the data gap between decennial headcounts.

The poverty threshold is adjusted each year. For last year, a single person was living below the poverty line if he or she had an annual income of $10,787 or less. The threshold for a family of four was $21,027.

Carroll Wilson