Native Americans, blacks have highest U.S. poverty rates

WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (Reuters) - American Indians and native Alaskans had the highest poverty rate in the United States, 27 percent, during the recession and economic recovery, followed by African Americans at 25.8 percent, according to government data released on Wednesday.

From 2007 through 2011, 14.3 percent of the country's population had incomes below the poverty level, the U.S. Census Bureau found in a special report on race and poverty.

Currently, the federal government's official poverty line is $15,510 for a couple or $18,123 for a single mother with two children.

Nearly one in two American Indians in South Dakota were poor, with the state having the highest rate for that group, 48.3 percent.

In Iowa, Maine, Mississippi and Wisconsin the rate for African Americans was above 35 percent from 2007 to 2011, indicating that more than one in three in those states lived in poverty, the report found.

As a whole, Hispanics had a rate of 23.2 percent, or 9 percentage points above the national rate. Within that group, though, rates followed a steep range, with Cubans having the lowest at 16.2 percent and Dominicans the highest of 26.3 percent.

The rates for Asian Americans also varied greatly, with only 5.8 percent of Filipinos living in poverty, compared with 15 percent of Koreans.

Overall, the national poverty rate for Asians, 11.7 percent, and whites, 11.6 percent, were below the overall national poverty rate.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Lisa Lambert; editing by Jim Marshall)