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NewsFlash: August 28, 2007

Census Data Find Income Up, Poverty Down but Health Coverage and Earnings Down

This morning’s annual Census Bureau data release shows real income gains for the median household and a decline in poverty, but the reality is many working Americans are just working more at lower wages.  An EPI analysis on the new data finds many challenges, including median annual earnings by full-time workers down for the third year in a row and an increase of 8.6 million Americans without health care coverage since 2000. 

EPI economists and authors Jared Bernstein, Lawrence Mishel, and Elise Gould provide an analysis of the poverty, income and health data that include a detailed look at income inequality, large losses of income by African-American households, immigration’s impact on the economy, and a historical landscape of poverty trends. The authors go beyond the numbers to find the real trends, including how the decline in median earnings in tandem with higher household income at the median suggests that more work, not higher wages, generated the income growth of middle-class households last year. 

REPORT: Income Picture
Read EPI’s  Income Picture  for analysis of today’s Census Bureau release

AUDIO: Lawrence Mishel comments on today’s release
[preview streaming MP3] [download MP3] [download uncompressed WAV]
(Run time: 22 sec.)

MEDIA CONTACTS: Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) State-Level Contacts for Analysis of Census Bureau figures on 2006 on poverty, income, and health insurance [PDF]

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