Census Data Show Income Rising 5.2% in 2015; Poverty Rate Drops

The Census Bureau yesterday released a surprising upbeat, broad-based picture of income and poverty that depicts a robust American middle class finally back on its feet from the jarring tumble of 2007.

“The median household income — the level at which half are above and half are below — rose 5.2%, or $2,798, to $56,516, from a year earlier, after adjusting for inflation,” Nick Timiraos and Janet Adamy report in the Wall Street Journal. 

“The increase was the largest annual gain recorded since the yearly survey of incomes began in 1967, though it didn’t fully close the gap left by last decade’s recessions. Median household incomes stood 1.6% shy of the 2007 level … and 2.4% below the all-time high reached in 1999.”

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The White House Blogtook full advantage of the report with a video of President Obama as he “discusses the remarkable progress today's Census report laid out with the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, Jason Furman.” 

A post by Furman, Sandra Black, a member of the council, and Matt Fiedler, its chief economist, then elaborates on six takeaways that present a rosier picture of the American economic landscape than political opponents have been painting.

1. Real median household income rose by 5.2% in 2015, the fastest growth on record.

2. The total number of Americans below the poverty line fell by 3.5 million from 2014 to 2015, and the official poverty rate fell to 13.5% due to the largest one-year drop since 1968.

3. Households at all income percentiles reported by the Census Bureau saw gains in income, with the largest gains among households at the bottom of the income distribution. 

4. All racial and ethnic groups saw increases in household incomes and decreases in poverty in 2015.

5. In 2015, refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) lifted 4.8 million children out of poverty.

6. In 2015, the share of people without health insurance declined in almost every state, and all states have seen gains since 2013, reflecting continued progress under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“The income hike isn’t likely to impress Trump, who insists that the federal government’s economic statistics are rigged,” reads the subhead under coverage of the report in Politico. A caption under a picture of a beaming Hillary Clinton offers a qualifier to that assertion: Trump does so “without citing any evidence, and contrary to virtually every independent expert.”

“The Clinton campaign immediately retweeted a favorable comment on the findings by University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers — adding, mischievously, a 2004 quote from Trump: ‘It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than under the Republicans,’” Politico’s Marianne Levine and Timothy Noah report.

At a campaign event in Philadelphia, Obama patted himself on the back: “So, now, let's face it; the Republicans don't like to hear good news right now,” he said, Don Lee reports in the Los Angeles Times. “But it's important just to understand this is a big deal. More Americans are working, more have health insurance, incomes are rising, poverty is falling, and gas is $2 a gallon. … Thanks, Obama!”

Neither Trump nor campaign surrogates responded directly to the Census report yesterday, but he asserted at a campaign rally in Clive, Iowa, that “his plans for the economy would do more than Democrats had done to reduce poverty,” Binyamin Appelbaum and Nick Corasaniti report in the New York Times.

“The poverty is beyond belief,” he said. “It’s time to break up the failed Democratic control over our inner cities and provide real hope and opportunity to every single community in this nation.”

And other Republicans interpreted the data “as evidence Democrats should step aside,” Appelbaum and Corasaniti write. 

“Today’s report is another disappointing confirmation that too many Americans are still struggling to provide for their families and reach their full potential,” said Rep. Kevin Brady (R – Tex.), the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. 

Some observers who acknowledge that the numbers are positive also maintain they could be better, such as Neil Irwin in the New York Times’ “The Upshot” column.

“The good news is that this expansion is generating stronger income growth for typical American families than they experienced in the early part of this century. The bad news is that it falls short of the results from the mid-1990s,” Irwin writes. And, as he points out earlier in the piece, “One dirty secret of economic analysis is that there is no perfect way to measure the financial well-being of 320 million Americans.”

The simplest way to measure it, of course, is whether they’re buying what you’re selling, as Clinton and Trump will rediscover soon enough.

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