Washington — Poverty diminished slightly in America last year, the Census Bureau said Tuesday, but the nation's health-insurance woes worsened as another 2.2 million people, including 700,000 children, joined the ranks of the uninsured.
The bureau's report gave a mixed picture of national economic health, suggesting the economic recovery eased poverty and helped boost incomes modestly last year.
But its figures showed health care remains a huge national issue that not only will play a major role in the presidential race but also when Congress returns from its summer break to take up an expansion of a children's health-care program.
The poverty rate fell from 12.6 percent in 2005 to 12.3 percent in 2006, reducing the number of the officially poor by nearly a half-million people, to 36.5 million. Of the 490,000 who escaped the ranks of the poor last year, 210,000 were 65 and over, according to the bureau. Critics said the poverty decline was disappointing since the economy has been growing since 2001.
The report said that "real," or inflation-adjusted, median household income increased by 0.7 percent to $48,200 in 2006, though Census officials said it has yet to reach the inflation-adjusted peak of $49,200 recorded in 1999, when the economy was booming. Median income is the point at which half make more and half make less.
Ironically, the inflation-adjusted median earnings of full-time men and women declined in 2006 for the second straight year. Household income rose because there were more full-time workers per household, suggesting that more people were working longer hours to make ends meet.
According to the report, the number of people without health insurance jumped from 44.8 million in 2005 to 47 million last year. The main reason was that more employers reduced health-care coverage, according to the report.
President Bush hailed the Census report in a statement, saying it showed "more of our citizens are doing better in this economy, with continued rising incomes and more Americans pulling themselves out of poverty."
But the president acknowledged the data "shows that challenges remain in reducing the number of uninsured Americans. Containing costs and making health insurance more affordable is the best way to reverse this long-term trend." He touted his plan to provide tax incentives to help more Americans obtain health insurance.
The report proved to be a presidential candidate's gold mine. "In the richest nation on earth, it is a moral outrage that one in 10 American families live in poverty and 47 million Americans do not have health care," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who has called for universal health-care coverage and stronger anti-poverty programs.
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just_another_bozo_on_this_bus (anonymous) says…
So what really happened is that more people are working multiple sh*t jobs, which provide no health benefits, desperately trying to tread water. In other words, there has been no real decrease in poverty.