The Great Recession has hit those on the bottom most heavily, adding six million Americans to the ranks of the officially poor.

The number of officially poor is now higher, at nearly 44 million, than at any time in the 51 years of this count. Yet these recent Census numbers hide as much as they reveal.

They don’t include the homeless, who number anywhere from half a million to three million. Nor do they count most doubled-up families – experts say they’re up by at least 11 percent.

And then there’s those young adults returning home who at other times would be living independently (the Census estimates 42 percent of them would be poor if still out on their own).

Most invisible are those whose incomes are above the poverty line but can’t afford the bare necessities, a problem that is most acute in high-cost urban areas.

Only senior citizens have been exempt from the general downward slide. They’re the only age group that experienced a decline in poverty and an actual increase in income in 2009.

This continues a long-term trend as elders have gone from being the poorest age group in 1959, when more than one in three was poor, to being the least poor group today with a poverty rate under 9 percent.