A WONDERFUL TOWN?

The popular song may declare that New York is a wonderful town but for many of its residents this is far from the truth. "The number of New Yorkers classified as poor in 2010 increased by nearly 100,000 from the year before, raising the poverty rate by 1.3 percentage points to 21 per cent — the highest level and the largest year-to-year increase since the city adopted a more detailed definition of poverty in 2005. The recession and the sluggish recovery have taken a particularly harsh toll on children, with more than one in four under 18 living in poverty, according to an analysis by the city's Center for Economic Opportunity that will be released on Tuesday." (New York Times, 17 April) If you are a millionaire and a resident of New York it may well be "My kind of town" as the song would have it, but for many of the working class of that city there is not much to sing about. RD