Median household income surged to $56,516 a year ago, from $53,718 in 2014, the first annual increase since 2007, before the recession started, the Census Bureau said on Tuesday.
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The typical USA household’s income rose 5.2 percent in 2015 to $56,516, the government said. Last year’s surge was the first statistically significant annual rise in median household income since 2007.
The official poverty rate decreased by 1.2 percentage points between 2014 and 2015, and the number of USA citizens living in poverty fell by 3.5 million between 2014 and 2015, the largest annual percentage point drop since 1999, officials said. Similarly, the poverty rate dropped to 13 percent in metropolitan statistical areas – down from 14.5 percent in 2014 – but the poverty rate outside of metro areas remained nearly unchanged at 16.7 percent.
But the Census Bureau’s Table FINC-01, which shows median household income by “characteristics of families”, demonstrates something else.
Some 90.9 percent of people had health insurance for at least part of 2015, up from 89.6 percent in 2014.
There is still a large disparity between white and black workers’ incomes. Despite the income jump a year ago, American households are still earning 2.4 percent below what they brought home at their income peaks in 1999. Median household incomes in Iowa have increased every year since 2010, according to the state data center.
“The median household income was still 1.6 percent lower than in 2007, adjusting for inflation”.
In Nebraska, the three-year average supplemental poverty rate, which is a different measure than the national one, was 9.1 percent, tied for third-lowest among the states. The bureau also reported that the official poverty rate dipped just over 1% in the past year. More full-time workers means more steady paychecks and greater pressure for employers to raise wages.
Meanwhile, the report showed fewer people lacked health insurance in 2015 than the previous year, largely because of expanded access through the Affordable Care Act.
In 2015, 12.2 per cent of males were in poverty while 14.8 per cent of females were in poverty, Census Bureau said.
“For low-income families that we work with”, said Babcock, “their own earnings are not going up fast enough to make headway in that 97 hours a week they have to work to pay the rent on an apartment”. But the estimated poverty rate in rural areas climbed by 0.2 percentage points, although that change is also within the survey’s margin of error.
Figures for Americans who lack healthcare also dropped, as did the poverty rate.
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The share of Americans with health insurance continued to increase and only 9.1 per cent of the population had no health insurance a year ago, noted Census Bureau.
