Newly released reports from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) show that median household income increased in the United States between 2016 and 2017, and the poverty rate declined in the same period. The percent of Americans without health insurance did not change significantly between 2016 and 2017.
Median household income nationally in 2017 was $61,372, which reflects an increase of 3.0 percent from 2016, after adjusting for inflation. This is the third year in a row that median income increased nationally. The median income of married-couple families increased by 1.6 percent to $90,386, but that of female-headed families ($41,703) was not significantly different from 2016. As in previous years, racial disparities persisted, with households headed by non-Hispanic whites making $68,145, compared to $40,258 for African-Americans, $81,331 for Asians and $50,486 for people with Hispanic/Latino ethnicity. Among full-time, year-round workers, women earned a median of $41,977 compared to $52,146 for men; on average, women’s earned income was 80.5 percent of men’s.
African-Americans had a poverty rate of 21.2 percent in 2017, more than twice the rate for non-Hispanic whites
[bctt tweet="Income, poverty and the uninsured - new Census data shows us how those numbers have changed and who is most affected" username="CommunitySols"]
In 2017, 39.7 million Americans lived below the federal poverty line ($24,858 for a family of four), not significantly different from 2016. The official poverty rate was 12.3 percent, down from 12.7 percent in 2016. This is the third consecutive year with a declining national poverty rate. African-Americans had a poverty rate of 21.2 percent in 2017, more than twice the rate for non-Hispanic whites, 8.7 percent; the Hispanic/Latino poverty rate was 18.3 percent. Among children under 18, 17.5 percent lived below poverty in 2017, compared to 11.2 percent of those aged 18 to 64, and 9.2 percent of those aged 65 and older.
Among full-time, year-round workers, women earned a median of $41,977 compared to $52,146 for men; on average, women’s earned income was 80.5 percent of men’s
Twenty-eight and a half million Americans were without health insurance for the whole year in 2017, which is 8.8 percent of the population. Two-thirds of Americans had private insurance, and 37.7 percent had government insurance (some people had both private and public coverage). Almost 700,000 Ohioans were uninsured in 2017, just more than half as many as in 2013, the year before the Affordable Care Act went into effect.
