On Wednesday, the Census Bureau will release the latest data on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage. As EPI’s research team eagerly awaits this release, there are a few things we will be watching for.

Due to a redesign of the underlying survey (the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, or CPS ASEC) in 2014, current estimates of incomes and poverty will not be directly comparable to years prior to 2013. This will also be a problem, albeit to a much lesser extent, with data on labor earnings. Since the Census Bureau will provide 2013 estimates based on both the old survey and the redesigned survey, we plan to deal with the break in the data series by focusing on two time periods. The first time period will cover 2000–2013, based on estimates from the old survey format. The second will be based on the redesigned estimates for 2013–2014. While in much of our analysis we will impute recent changes onto the data back to 2000 to get a better sense in that longer term trend, we will provide clear guidance on how the survey redesign affects these trends.

On Wednesday, we are going to most closely examine median earnings for men and women, median household income, and poverty rates. We will be looking not only at what we expect to be some improvement in these metrics between 2013 and 2014, but also what’s been happening since 2000. We know that even in the full business cycle 2000-07, earnings and incomes never fully recovered pre-recession peaks, and when the Great Recession hit, the economic impacts were devastating for many. To the extent the data will allow, we will look at how much the recovery has helped improve the economic lot for Americans, with particular attention to livelihood across racial and ethnic groups.