The New Census Data

Here is one man's reaction:

Despite modest improvements in overall median income and health insurance coverage, the new Census data are disquieting. Though 2007 was the sixth (and likely the final) year of an economic expansion, 4.4 million more Americans were poor, the median income of non-elderly households was $1,100 lower, and nearly 6 million more Americans were uninsured than in 2001 — even though the economy was in recession that year.

This is unprecedented. Never before on record has poverty been higher and median income for working-age households lower at the end of a multi-year economic expansion than at the beginning. The new data add to the mounting evidence that the gains from the 2001-2007 expansion were concentrated among high-income Americans.

Compared to 2006, overall median household income edged up 1.3 percent in 2007. Median income for “working age” households — those headed by someone under 65 — remained statistically unchanged, however, and the number (although not the percentage) of Americans living in poverty increased by 816,000 people to 37.3 million.

In addition, the number of children living in poverty jumped by 500,000 to 13.3 million, and the child poverty rate climbed from 17.4 percent in 2006 to 18.0 percent in 2007. There was some welcome news on child health insurance – the number of children lacking health insurance declined in 2007, but it remained 400,000 above the number of children who lacked insurance three years earlier, in 2004.

The data also show that employer-based health coverage — and private health coverage in general — continued to erode in 2007, and that all of the improvement in health care coverage in 2007 was due to more Americans obtaining coverage through government health insurance programs, principally Medicare and Medicaid.