A family of four is considered to be living in poverty if the household income is $24,257 or less.
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The Census Bureau’s annual report was based on a survey of 95,000 households. Middle-class incomes had seen little improvement since the recession ended in 2009, even as the unemployment rate fell and hiring picked up.
“It’s really a broad, broad increase in median incomes, and one of the largest increases. that we’ve ever had”, said Trudi Renwick, assistant division chief at the Census Bureau.
The figures could also impact the presidential campaign. In the City of Alexandria, the median household income was $90,056 in 2015, up slightly from $86,809 in 2014. In fact, the reduction in poverty can be attributed, in part, to a 5.2 percent increase in median household income – the first annual increase in median household income since 2007. In 2011, the county’s poverty rate was 6.4 percent.
“Poverty rates fell most sharply for African-American and Hispanic households, but their income gains were smaller than for white households”, the report added. More full-time workers means more steady paychecks and greater pressure for employers to raise wages.
Several states, including Pennsylvania, Indiana and Alaska, expanded their Medicaid programs previous year, taking advantage of increased federal funding under the Affordable Care Act.
Still, most economists expect paychecks will keep rising this year and finally return Americans to pre-recession levels of income.
Tap into millions of public records, notices and articles on The Daily News with our ever-growing line of services. The actual number of people in this group living in poverty did decrease, however, to 7.4 million from 8.2 million in the year before.
The income gains mark an important turning point in the recovery from the 2008 recession, showing that recent economic gains are being distributed more broadly. That narrowed the gap between the two groups by the largest amount on record. The report, he said, “shows the remarkable progress that American families have made as the recovery continues to strengthen”. By 2014, that share had fallen to 49.1 percent.
High pay for EpiPen execs – The Wall Street Journal: “The drugmaker buffeted by the furor over hefty price increases on its lifesaving EpiPen had the second-highest executive compensation among all USA drug and biotech firms over the past five years, paying its top five managers a total of almost $300 million, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis”. Allegheny County’s poverty rate, also 12.3 percent, dropped a full percentage point from 13.3 percent in 2014.
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The income gains for less affluent households probably have continued in 2016.
