Despite robust economic growth last year, 1.1 million more Americans slipped into poverty in 2004, while household incomes stagnated and earnings fell, the Census Bureau reported yesterday. The number of Americans without health insurance rose by 800,000, to 45.8 million.
The Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance sheds light on voter discontent with the economy in the face of seemingly strong economic data. The broad data draw a picture of a labor market still struggling to find its footing, three years after the 2001 recession.
"The poverty rate seems to be the last lonely lagging indicator of the business cycle," said E.R. Anderson, chief of staff in the Commerce Department's economic directorate, which oversees the Census Bureau.
The median household income stood at $44,389 last year, down slightly from the 2003 level of $44,482. But that level was propped up by more people going to work for lower earnings. A full-time male worker earned a median income of $40,798 last year, down $963 in inflation-adjusted dollars from 2003. Women's median earnings fell $327, to $31,223.
The poverty rate climbed in 2004 to 12.7 percent, from 12.5 percent in 2003 -- the fourth year in a row that poverty has risen. The increase was borne completely by non-Hispanic whites, the only ethnic group that saw its poverty rate rise. The percentage of whites in poverty rose from 8.2 percent in 2003 to 8.6 percent. African Americans saw no change in their poverty rate, which remained at 24.7 percent. The poverty rate for Hispanics remained at 21.9 percent, while Asian Americans' poverty levels dropped by two percentage points, to 9.8 percent.
The Midwest was the only region that saw both the poverty rate rise and median household income fall, a "double whammy," said Ron Haskins, a welfare economist at the Brookings Institution
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083001727.html
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