US Households Are Finally Making More Than They Did in 1999

Mayor Mike Duggan, who is running for reelection, was optimistic about the news.

“We also put it at the end of the questionnaire and people get exhausted”, said Olson.

MCEVERS: These federal programs we hear so much about.

That’s the minimum the U.S. Census Bureau says a family of four with a mortgage living in the New Orleans metro area needed in 2015 to make in order to cover basic needs like food, clothing and housing.

In real terms, median earnings of full-time, year-round working women in 2016 were 2.3 percent higher than their 2007 median, the year before the most recent recession.

But since the 2007-2009 downturn ended, the gap between the top and bottom earners has ballooned, according to Census data.

Statistics Canada reported that in 2015, 17 per cent of Canadian children under age 18 lived in low-income households, a figure that has stayed virtually unchanged for a decade even as median incomes have steadily gone up across the country.

No state-by-state data on median household was available Tuesday, but the Northeast, which includes CT, did have the highest median household income, at $64,390. Black households saw a 5.7% increase, while Latinx household income grew by 4.3%.

He noted that the poverty rate was 15.3% in Florida and 15% in Texas before those states were hit hard by massive storms.

Internal government estimates pegged this year’s child poverty rate at between 11.7 and 13 per cent, based on the LIM.

In addition, the nation’s official poverty rate declined to 12.7 percent in 2016, a 0.8 percentage-point drop from the year before.

Excluding those older than 3 enrolled in post-secondary school, La Crosse County has a poverty rate of 8.75 percent, significantly lower than in Milwaukee, Racine or Kenosha counties. That’s a difference of $24,104, up from $23,035 in 2015 and just $5,318 when the series started in 1967.

Though poverty rates decreased in 2016, they remain highest for black and latinx households. That also was the second consecutive year of a decline in the nation’s poverty rate.

“From what we are seeing, there are still a lot of people struggling below the ALICE threshold”, said Stephanie Hoopes, director of the ALICE Project. The minimum wage rises to $11.50 on January 1, 2018. Of course, that was the past year of the Obama administration.

Another measurement was on health insurance. The share of uninsured Americans has dropped in all 50 states since the Affordable Care Act went into effect in 2014.

“More needs to be done”, she said.

“The last two years have been pretty good nationwide”, Ballard said.

The bigger problem is that it took this long to get back to slightly above 1999’s numbers.

If they don’t, Baker said, it’s unclear what will be the fate of the exchange and the people covered through it.

The economic expansion that began in mid-2009 is now the third longest in US history, though the pace of growth has been modest by historical standards. This suggests that, in 2016, workers on the margins were the ones who benefited from more jobs and more full-time hours, while less marginalized workers experienced minimal improvements.