Catholic Charities searches for new answers to fight poverty

The statistics are numbing: About 40 million people in the United States live in poverty.

According to a report issued in January by the Brookings Institution, about 17.5 percent of the people in Nashville lived in poverty in 2008. That’s less than the 24.5 percent in Knoxville and the 23.1 percent in Memphis. Reports put the statewide number at 15.5 percent.

But such statistics are not going unnoticed.

Monday, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and a task force released a report with 30 recommendations for reducing poverty here, with a goal of cutting the rate in half by 2020.

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