WASHINGTON The number of children in the United States relying on food stamps for a meal spiked to 16 million last year, according federal data, signaling a lopsided economic recovery in which lower income families are still lagging behind. 
 
 The roughly one in five children who received food stamps in 2014 surpassed pre-recession levels, when one in eight or 9 million children were on food stamps, according to the U.S. Census survey of American families released on Wednesday 
 
 Republicans in Congress have sought to cut back on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or food stamp program as part of a larger plan to balance the budget. 
 
 Early last year lawmakers proposed $40 billion in cuts from the program over 10 years. The final farm bill signed into law trimmed $8.6 billion from the program, eliminating benefits for about 850,000 people, according to estimates by anti-hunger advocates. 
 
 Other findings of the survey show a rapidly changing America in which more children are being raised in single-parent homes and more young people are delaying marriage. 
 
 Of the 73.7 million children under 18 in the United States, 27 percent were living in single parent homes last year, tripling the 9 percent in 1960. 
 
 The number of marriages also dwindled last year with less than half of households in America made up of married couples, compared to three-quarters in 1940, the survey found. 
 
 The median age for people first getting married in 2014 was 29 for men and 27 for women up from 24 and 21 respectively in 1947. 
 
 (Reporting by Elvina Nawaguna; Editing by Sandra Maler) ||||| The U.S. economy is showing signs of finally bottoming out: Americans are on the move again after record numbers had stayed put, more young adults are leaving their parents' homes to take a chance with college or the job market, once-sharp declines in births are leveling off and poverty is slowing. 
 
 FILE - In this June 13, 2012, file photo, a job seeker talks to a recruiter at a job fair expo in Anaheim, Calif. The U.S. economy is showing signs of finally bottoming out: Americans are on the move... (Associated Press) 
 
 New 2011 census data being released Thursday offer glimmers of hope in an economic recovery that technically began in mid-2009. The annual survey, supplemented with unpublished government figures as of March 2012, covers a year in which unemployment fell modestly from 9.6 percent to 8.9 percent. 
 
 Not all is well. The jobless rate remains high at 8.1 percent. Home ownership dropped for a fifth straight year to 64.6 percent, the lowest in more than a decade, hurt by more stringent financing rules and a shift to renting. More Americans than ever are turning to food stamps, while residents in housing that is considered "crowded" held steady at 1 percent, tied for the highest since 2003. 
 
 Taken as a whole, however, analysts say the latest census data provide wide-ranging evidence of a stabilizing U.S. economy. Coming five years after the housing bust, such a leveling off would mark an end to the longest and most pernicious economic decline since World War II. 
 
 "We may be seeing the beginning of the American family's recovery from the Great Recession," said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University. He pointed in particular to the upswing in mobility and to young men moving out of their parents' homes, both signs that more young adults were testing out job prospects. 
 
 "It could be the modest number of new jobs or simply the belief that the worst is over," Cherlin said. 
 
 Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University, said the data point to a "fragile recovery," with the economy still at risk of falling back into recession, depending in part on who is president and whether Congress averts a "fiscal cliff" of deep government spending cuts and higher taxes in January. "Given the situation in the world economy, we are doing better than many other countries," he said. "Government policies remain critical." 
 
 The census figures also show slowing growth in the foreign-born population, which increased to 40.4 million, or 13 percent of the U.S. population. Last year's immigration increase of 400,000 people was the lowest in a decade, reflecting a minimal gain of Latinos after many Mexicans already in the U.S. opted to return home. Some 11 million people are estimated to be in the U.S. illegally. 
 
 The bulk of new immigrants are now higher-skilled workers from Asian countries such as China and India, contributing to increases in the foreign-born population in California, New York, Illinois and New Jersey. 
 
 Income inequality varied widely by region. The gap between rich and poor was most evident in the District of Columbia, New York, Connecticut, Louisiana and New Mexico, where immigrant or minority groups were more numerous. By county, Berkeley in West Virginia had the biggest jump in household income inequality over the past year, a result of fast suburban growth just outside the Washington-Baltimore region, where pockets of poor residents and newly arrived, affluent commuters live side by side. 
 
 As a whole, Americans were slowly finding ways to get back on the move. About 12 percent of the nation's population, or 36.5 million, moved to a new home, up from a record low of 11.6 percent in 2011. 
 
 Among young adults 25 to 29, the most mobile age group, moves also increased to 24.6 percent from a low of 24.1 percent in the previous year. Longer-distance moves, typically for those seeking new careers in other regions of the country, rose modestly from 3.4 percent to 3.8 percent. 
 
 Less willing to rely on parents, roughly 5.6 million Americans ages 25-34, or 13.6 percent, lived with Mom and Dad, a decrease from 14.2 percent in the previous year. Young men were less likely than before to live with parents, down from 18.6 percent to 16.9 percent; young women living with parents edged higher to 10.4 percent, up from 9.7percent. 
 
 The increases in mobility coincide with modest improvements in the job market as well as increased school enrollment, especially in college and at advanced-degree levels. 
 
 Marriages dipped to a low of just 50.8 percent among adults 18 and over, compared with 57 percent in 2000. Among young adults 25-34, marriage was at 43.1 percent, also a new low, part of a longer-term cultural trend in which people are opting to marry at later ages and often cohabitate with a partner first. 
 
 Births, on the other hand, appeared to be coming back after years of steep declines. In 2011, the number of births dipped by 55,000, or 1 percent, to 4.1 million, the smallest drop since the pre-recession peak in 2008, according to Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor and senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire. More recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also show that once-precipitous drops in births are slowing. 
 
 "There are signs that young adults have turned a corner," said Mark Mather, associate vice president at the Population Reference Bureau. "More young adults are staying in school, which will increase their potential earnings when the job market bounces back. It's going to take some time, but we should see more young adults entering the labor force, buying homes and starting families as economic conditions improve." 
 
 While poverty slowed, food stamp use continued to climb. Roughly 14.9 million, or 13 percent of U.S. households, received food stamps, the highest level on record, meaning that 1 in 8 families was receiving the government aid. Oregon led the nation at 18.9 percent, or nearly 1 in 5, due in part to generous state provisions that expand food stamp eligibility to families making 185 percent of the poverty level _ roughly $3,400 a month for a family of four. Oregon was followed by more rural or more economically hard-hit states, including Michigan, Tennessee, Maine, Kentucky and Mississippi. Wyoming had the fewest households on food stamps, at 5.9 percent. 
 
 Government programs did much to stave off higher rates of poverty. While the official poverty rate for 2011 remained stuck at 15 percent, or a record 46.2 million people, the government formula did not take into account noncash aid such as food stamps, which the Census Bureau estimates would have lifted 3.9 million people above the poverty line. If counted, that safety net would have lowered the poverty rate to 13.7 percent. And without expanded unemployment benefits, which began expiring in 2011, roughly 2.3 million people would have fallen into poverty. 
 
 Some 17 states showed statistically significant increases in the poverty rate, led by Louisiana, Oregon, Arizona, Georgia and Hawaii. Among large metropolitan areas, McAllen, Texas, led the nation in poverty, at 38 percent, followed by Fresno, Calif., El Paso, Texas, and Bakersfield, Calif. In contrast, the Washington, D.C., metro area had the lowest level of poverty, about 8 percent, followed by Bridgeport, Conn., and Ogden, Utah. 
 
 "There are signs among all these measures that the multiple downsides of the Great Recession have bottomed out, which is good news especially for young people who have seen their lives put on hold," said William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings Institution. "There is some light at the end of the tunnel." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Online: 
 
 www.census.gov ||||| The U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday that 16 million children living in America received food stamps in 2014, or about one out of every five kids. 
 
 Census said that number is up dramatically from 2007, before the Great Recession, when 9 million kids were receiving food stamps, or about one in eight. The data comes from Census’ 2014 survey on families. 
 
 “The rate of children living with married parents who receive food stamps has doubled since 2007,” Census said. 
 
 The findings are likely to bolster claims from some Republicans that the Obama administration seems to have a goal of putting more people under government aid programs. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 2012 called President Barack Obama the “food stamp president,” which led some to say his comment was racist. 
 
 The debate over food stamps has led to a sort of chicken-and-egg argument between Republicans and Democrats. The GOP has said the end of the recession should allow Congress to reduce spending on food stamps. 
 
 While Democrats have tried to give President Barack Obama credit for a rebounding economy, they also note that millions of additional people are using food stamps, and that the program should not be cut yet. The total number of people using food stamps has almost doubled since the start of the Great Recession, to nearly 48 million in 2013. 
 
 The number finally dipped from that peak in 2014, but just a little, to about 46 million people. 
 
 Republicans have tried since 2013 to cut food stamp spending, as part of their overall plan to slow spending and get control of the budget deficit. In 2013, the House voted to cut $39 billion from food stamps over a decade, and almost a year ago, President Barack Obama signed a final deal that will cut just $8.7 billion from the program over ten years. 
 
 That cut was estimated to reduce food stamp benefits by about $90 per month for the hundreds of thousands of homes that use them.
– There are roughly 73.7 million kids running around America, and about 16 million, or nearly one in five, of them are doing so fueled by food stamps, according to US Census data out yesterday. That number is particularly alarming when compared to pre-recession levels: In 2007, some 9 million, or one in eight, kids were on food stamps. There are currently about 46 million Americans total on food stamps, down from the 2013 peak of 48 million. The jump signals what Reuters says is a "lop-sided" economic recovery that has left low-income people behind, but it also underscores a fundamental partisan divide over social welfare programs. As the Blaze notes, Republicans want to scale back the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program—arguing that the end of the recession should indicate less need—and trimmed $8.6 billion and 850,000 people from its rolls with last year's farm bill. Democrats, meanwhile, argue that it's too soon to scale back the program. Meanwhile, some other highlights from the Census numbers: 27% of children live in single-parent homes, three times the 9% who did in 1960 10% of kids live with a grandparent, 15% have a stay-at-home mom, 0.6% have a stay-at-home dad, and 38% have at least one foreign-born parent 48% of households are made up of married couples, down from 76% in 1940 Americans are continuing to marry later, at a median age of 29 for men and 27 for women; that's up from 24 and 21 in 1947