"America at large was prospering in the '90s. The United States economy grew by an average of 4 percent per year between 1992 and 1999... An average of 1.7 million jobs a year were added to the American work force... The unemployment rate dropped from nearly 8 percent in 1992 to 4 percent- that is effectively zero- at the end of the decade... From 1990 to 1999, the median American household income grew by 10 percent... The poverty rate... fell to nearly 11 percent in 2000, more or less its postwar low." - Kurt Anderson, The New York Times