The nation’s median household income grew modestly in 2006, the Census Bureau reported yesterday, even as the percentage of people without health insurance hit a high. þþExperts said the rise in income was mainly a reflection of an increase in the number of family members entering the workplace or working longer hours. Average wages for men and women actually declined for the third consecutive year. þþ“There’s lots of evidence that more people are working,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal policy group in Washington. “The important theme going on here is a labor market that’s definitely offering people more work and more hours, but at lower wages.”þþThe slight improvements in household income and a drop in the poverty rate came during a period of job growth, particularly toward the end of 2006, and declining inflation as a result of falling oil prices. But in 2007, the economy has begun weakening because of the national housing slump, and inflation has jumped. The average wage peaked at $17.52 an hour in February and has since fallen, according to Labor Department data.þþSome Republicans seized on the new data as evidence that Bush administration policies had been good for people’s pocketbooks. In a statement, President Bush said the news was a sign that Congress should not raise taxes. The data, he said, confirmed “that more of our citizens are doing better in this economy, with continued rising incomes and more Americans pulling themselves out of poverty.” þþBut others saw a mixed picture, with household incomes still below their peak before the last recession in 2001. þþ“Too many low- and middle-income families are not sharing in the gains,” said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, another liberal research group. “These figures are inconsistent with claims that the policies of recent years have produced an outstanding economic track record.”þþAnd the new data on the rise in the number of those uninsured prompted advocates for the poor to step up their call for Congress to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides subsidized insurance to children of the working poor. Mr. Bush has threatened to veto measures proposed by the House and Senate. þþChanges in economic circumstances varied regionally and by race and age. þþAlthough median household income rose by seven-tenths of a 1 percent over all, the only statistically significant increase was in white households. It was the first real increase for white households, after adjusting for inflation, since 1999, census officials said. þþIn the meantime, the poverty rate fell in 2006 for the first time this decade. But Hispanics were the only ethnic group with a statistically significant drop, to 20.6 percent from 21.8. The number of whites, blacks and Asians living in poverty was virtually unchanged. þþAbout 24 percent of blacks lived in poverty in 2006, compared with 8.2 percent of whites and 10.3 percent of Asians.þþElderly people appeared to have gained the most. Their poverty rate was the lowest since 1959, when the government began collecting such data. Some experts predicted that this trend would continue as hundreds of thousands of affluent baby boomers age in the next few decades. þþOver all, 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 five years of decline. þþDouglas J. Besharov, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group, said that while the year-to-year increase in household income was small, the broader picture over the last few decades was more promising and more important. þþ“Over all,” Mr. Besharov said, “a lot of groups have done better over the last 40 years.”þþThe West was the only region to experience a drop in the number and percentage of people in poverty last year. The South continued to have the highest poverty rate, at 13.8 percent, versus 12.3 percent nationally, and the lowest median household income, $43,884.þþAmong large cities, Plano, Tex., a Dallas suburb, 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 some of the lowest incomes. þþCensus officials attributed the rise in the uninsured — to 47 million from 44.8 million in 2005 — mostly to people 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.þþThe percentage of people with government-provided health insurance also dropped, to 27 percent from 27.3 percent.þþ“While the employer-based system slowly unravels,” Mr. Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute said, “the public system isn’t quite stepping up to the plate to pick up the slack, and therein lies the problem.” þþMr. Besharov agreed, but said, as many critics do, that census figures did not accurately count the number of uninsured. He also said it was important to remember that employers were struggling with major increases in the cost of providing health benefits.þþ“Employers are really feeling a bite here,” Mr. Besharov said, “and so as much as possible, they’re trying to limit these increases and push them onto the employees. That means a lot of people drop their coverage.” þþThe number of uninsured children increased to 8.7 million, or 11.7 percent, in 2006, from 8 million, or 10.9 percent, in 2005. þþTexas had the highest percentage of uninsured residents in 2006, 24.1, while Minnesota had the lowest, at 8.5 percent.þþJust over half of household income was concentrated in the top 20 percent of Americans in 2006, about the same as in 2005. Households in the lowest 20 percent, on the other hand, accounted for only 3.4 percent of the nation’s household income. þþManhattan had the greatest income disparity between rich and poor residents outside Puerto Rico, according to an analysis of the data conducted for The New York Times by the sociology department of Queens College. It was followed by Apache County, Ariz., which is rural and largely American Indian, and the District of Columbia. þþMr. Bernstein attributed the drop in wages to the waning bargaining power of workers, and said it was disappointing, given that 2006 was the fifth year of economic recovery since the recession of 2001. þþBut Mr. Besharov said immigration could be to blame. ÿWages are pretty weak,” he said, “not the least because we have a lot of immigrants in this country willing to work a little more than everyone else.” þþ
Source: NY Times
