BEIJING - Poverty rate among American women and children has reached new record high, said the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011, released on Friday by the State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China.

According to data from the United States Census Bureau, over 17 million women lived in poverty in 2010, including more than 7.5 million in extreme poverty and 4.7 million single mothers in poverty, said the report.

The poverty rate among women climbed to 14.5 percent in 2010 from 13.9 percent in 2009, the highest in 17 years; the extreme poverty rate among women climbed to 6.3 percent in 2010 from 5.9 percent in 2009, the highest rate ever recorded, the report said.

The data from the US Census Bureau also showed that more than 1 million children were added to the poverty population between 2009 and 2010, making the total number of children living below the poverty line exceed 15 million, the greatest since 2001.

The number of homeless children has surged. In 2010, 1.6 million children in the United States were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, up 33 percent from that in 2007, the report said, quoting figures from the US National Center on Family Homelessness.

A report by the New York Times on October 15, 2011 said the infant mortality rate in the United States was 6.7 deaths per 1,000 live births, while the infant mortality rate among the African-Americans, 13.3 deaths per 1,000, almost doubles the national average.