Poverty advocates called the numbers embarrassing.
"How is it possible that the wealthiest state in the wealthiest nation in the world has a rising poverty rate and such a high poverty rate?" said Matthew Weinstein, Baltimore regional director of Progressive Maryland.
The figures came from the American Community Survey, which includes jurisdictions with 65,000 inhabitants or more. Unlike the census figures, which are tallied every decade, the ACS numbers are an estimate based on a sample.
In Harford County, the poverty rate rose to 5.4 percent, compared with 3.3 percent in 2006.
Jerome Reyerson, director of Social Services in Harford County, said he sees it. On Monday, he came to work and found a packed room. "I was astonished to find about 50 people, representing a wide range of ages from young mothers to seniors, all waiting to apply for some type of benefits," he said.
A striking indicator has been requests for food stamps. In 2000, Harford had 2,149 households using food stamps. In April of this year, that number exceeded 4,700 households, Reyerson said.
"People are having to make choices about whether to put food on the table or buy gas to go to work," he said.
The number of Marylanders without health insurance showed a slight decrease, but it wasn't statistically significant. Last year, 762,000 people didn't have health insurance, or 13.7 percent of the population, compared with 776,000 in 2006, or 13.8 percent of Marylanders.
Neil Bergsman, director of the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute, said there are still about 250,000 more Marylanders without health insurance than there were in 2000. "With the wealth in this state we should be making better progress on poverty, and we should be making better progress on insurance coverage," he said.
Baltimore Sun reporters Mary Gail Hare and Larry Carson contributed to this article.
