The nation’s poverty rate fell in 2006 for the first time this decade, the Census Bureau reported today, even as the percentage of Americans without health insurance coverage hit a record high.
The results were not consistent across racial or age groups. For Hispanics, the poverty rate fell by 1.2 percentage points to 20.6 percent, while for whites, blacks and Asians, it remained statistically unchanged.
For elderly people, the poverty rate was among the lowest since 1959, when the government began collecting such data.
Median household income rose slightly for the second consecutive year, by seven-tenths of a percent, but the only statistically significant increase was in white households. It was the first real increase for white households since 1999.
Overall, the nation’s median household income rose to $48,201 in 2006, from $47,845 in 2005. It was the second consecutive year in which income rose slightly faster than inflation, after six years of decline.
“Even though overall it has not recovered to its 1999 pre-recessionary peak,” said David Johnson, chief of the housing and household economic statistics division for the Census Bureau, “the gap is narrowing.”
The slight improvements in household income and the poverty rate came even as the nation’s housing market started its steep decline and hurt employment in some states. But overall, it was a year of slow improvement in the job market and declining inflation.
The West was the only region of the country to experience a drop in the number and percentage of people in poverty. The South continued to have the highest poverty rate, at 13.8 percent, compared with 12.3 percent nationally, and the lowest median household income, $43,884.
Among large cities, Plano, Tex., had the highest median household income in 2006, while Cleveland, Miami, Buffalo and Detroit had the lowest. Among smaller cities, Youngstown, Ohio, and Syracuse had among the lowest incomes.
Census officials attributed the rise in uninsured Americans to 47 million from 44.8 million in 2005 mostly to Americans losing employer-provided or privately purchased health insurance. The percentage of people who received health benefits through an employer declined to 59.7 percent in 2006 from 60.2 percent in 2005.
The percentage of people with government-provided health insurance also dropped, to 27 percent from 27.3 percent.
The number of uninsured children increased to 8.7 million, or 11.7 percent, in 2006, from 8 million, or 10.9 percent, in 2006.
Texas had the highest percentage of uninsured residents in 2006 with 24.1 percent, while Minnesota had the lowest at 8.5 percent.
Mr. Johnson warned that even as median household incomes climbed slightly last year, both men and women brought home less pay for the third consecutive year. The household income growth was a reflection of more family members taking jobs to make ends meet, he said, and of some people earning more from sources other than wages, like investments.
Just over half of household income was concentrated in the fifth of the population with top income 2006, about the same as in 2005. Households in the lowest income quintile, on the other hand, accounted for only 3.4 percent of the nation’s household income.
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OPINION = EDITORIAL;
A Sobering Census Report: Bleak Findings on Health Insurance
New York Times - Aug. 29, 2007
The Census Bureau’s report on the state of American health insurance was as disturbing as its statistics on poverty and income. The bureau reported a large increase in the number of Americans who lack health insurance, data that ought to send an unmistakable message to Washington: vigorous action is needed to reverse this alarming and intractable trend.
The number of uninsured Americans has been rising inexorably over the past six years as soaring health care costs have driven up premiums, employers have scaled back or eliminated health benefits and hard-pressed families have found themselves unable to purchase insurance at a reasonable price. Last year, the number of uninsured Americans increased by a daunting 2.2 million, from 44.8 million in 2005 to 47.0 million in 2006. That scotched any hope that the faltering economic recovery would help alleviate the problem.
The main reason for the upsurge in uninsured Americans is that employment-based coverage continued to deteriorate. Indeed, the number of full-time workers without health insurance rose from 20.8 million in 2005 to 22.0 million in 2006, presumably because either the employers or the workers or both found it too costly.
Sadly, the one area where the nation had made progress — reducing the number of uninsured children — took a turn for the worse. The number of uninsured children under 18 dropped steadily and significantly from 1999 to 2004, thanks largely to an expansion in coverage of low-income children under two programs operated jointly by the states and the federal government, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Then last year the number of uninsured children jumped more than 600,000 to reach 8.6 million. The main reason, advocacy groups say, is that access and funding for the low-income programs became tighter while employer coverage for dependents eroded.
The challenge to the White House and Congress seems clear. The upward trend in the number of uninsured needs to be reversed because many studies have shown that people who lack health insurance tend to forgo needed care until they become much sicker and go to expensive emergency rooms for treatment. That harms their health and drives up everyone’s health care costs.
The most immediate need is to reauthorize and expand the expiring State Children’s Health Insurance Program. It has already brought health coverage to millions of young Americans. It should be reinvigorated to bring coverage to many millions more.
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