USA poverty rate back to pre-crisis levels

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau showed good news for Americans in 2016: Household income is up, poverty is down, the gender pay gap narrowed, and healthcare coverage expanded. In the two years following the end of the Great Recession, median household income almost $2,000 to $50,054 in 2011.

The official poverty rate dropped 0.8 percentage points, from 12.7 percent in 2016, or 40.6 million people in poverty, which is 2.5 million people fewer than in 2015.

Some 28.1 million people lacked health insurance in 2016, down from 41.8 million in 2013. Meanwhile, household income and poverty improved less for demographic categories that are traditionally more economically secure. A year ago they made about 79% of what men made.

The supplemental poverty measure factors in the government programs for low-income families and individuals, as well as housing costs, which are not included in the official poverty measure.

"The fact that low income is stable means that people at the bottom of the (income) distribution are more or less keeping up with that growth", said Andrew Heisz, assistant director in Statistics Canada's income statistics division.

According to the EPI's analysis of Census states the median income of non-elderly households is still well behind the peak reached in 2000 at $69,890, and she said it was "problematic" that men's wages had stalled in 2016. Only 6.9 percent of the state's residents live below the poverty line, compared with a national average of 13.7 percent (in MS almost 21 percent of people live in poverty).

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More good news, those earning less than $30,000 per year is also on the decline in Toronto. Overall since 2014, total employment rose by 4.6 million, with full-time, year-round employment accounting for the entirety of the net growth in jobs.

The increase in household incomes led to a decline in poverty.

The country's poverty rate declined to 12.7 percent returning back to what it was in 2007 prior to a monetary crisis and gaping depression bashed the workers in ways that the scars were left to heal. It shows that programs like Social Security, the earned income tax credit and SNAP, or food stamps, do lift tens of millions of Americans out of poverty every year.

The agency defined low income as after-tax household income that is less than half of the median household income: so below $22,133 for a single-person household, or $44,266 for a four-person household. In Laredo, which had the highest share, 45 percent of children live in poverty.

The bureau reported the median income of non-Hispanic white households at $65,041, black households at $39,490, and Hispanic households at $47,675.

National poverty rates are among their highest in storm-swept Texas and Florida.

. "We have a long way to go", Duggan said. Now, that said, adjusted for inflation, middle American households are still at about the same income level as they were in 2007 just before the Great Recession. That is about on par with the national threshold at $25,930 a year. Neither the poverty rate nor the number in poverty was statistically different from 2015.