Eighty percent of U.S. adults confront poverty, joblessness or a dependence on welfare at least once in their lives, according to recent survey conducted by the Associated Press.

The survey underscores the increasingly widening gap between the rich and the poor and diminishing options for well-paying blue-collar jobs.

According to the data, 46.2 million, or 15 percent of the population is poor, a persistent sign of the high unemployment that followed the recession.

Poverty rates among blacks and Hispanics are almost three times as high as they are for whites. Still, in terms of absolute numbers, there are more poor whites: 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four and whites account for more than 41 percent of the nation's poor.

Hopelessness about diminishing economic opportunities is particularly pronounced among whites. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor," the highest percentage since 1987.

Seventy-six percent of white adults will be economically insecure -- defined as a year or more of periodic joblessness, reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line-by the time they turn 60, according to the data.

Among the findings of the data reported by the AP include:

  •  For the first time since 1975, the number of white single-mother households living in poverty with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and faster rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites. White single-mother families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011, comparable to the number for blacks. Hispanic single-mother families in poverty trailed at 1.2 million.
  •  Since 2000, the poverty rate among working-class whites has grown faster than among working-class nonwhites, rising 3 percentage points to 11 percent as the recession took a bigger toll among lower-wage workers. Still, poverty among working-class nonwhites remains higher, at 23 percent.
  •  The share of children living in high-poverty neighborhoods -- those with poverty rates of 30 percent or more -- has increased to 1 in 10, putting them at higher risk of teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 17 percent of the child population in such neighborhoods, compared with 13 percent in 2000, even though the overall proportion of white children in the U.S. has been declining.
  •  The share of black children in high-poverty neighborhoods dropped from 43 percent to 37 percent, while the share of Latino children went from 38 percent to 39 percent.
  •  Race disparities in health and education have narrowed generally since the 1960s. While residential segregation remains high, a typical black person now lives in a non-majority black neighborhood for the first time. Previous studies have shown that wealth is a greater predictor of standardized test scores than race; the test-score gap between rich and low-income students is now nearly double the gap between blacks and whites.