The median middle-class US household earned an inflation-adjusted $61,372 last year – an increase of 1.8% over 2016 and an all-time high as it blew through the previous record set in 1999, according to a Wednesday release by the US Census Bureau. The percentage of people in poverty, meanwhile, dropped slightly from 12.7% to 12.3% – the third consecutive decline.
Inflation adjusted median household income for Hispanic Americans, meanwhile, increased 3.7% between 2016 and 2017 – reaching its highest level on record as well at $50,486, tweets Pew Research Senior Economist, Richard Fry.
Inflation adjusted median household income for Hispanic Americans increased 3.7% from 2016 to 2017 and reached highest level on record at $50,486 https://t.co/AUOczQWhql @uscensusbureau pic.twitter.com/SZPG6heVK5
— Richard Fry (@r_fry1) September 12, 2018
Fry does point out that the Census redesigned the income questions in 2013, so the figures aren’t “strictly comparable.”
Inflation adjusted median household income at $61,372 in 2017, highest on record and topping previous 1999 peak. BUT Census redesigned the income questions in 2013, so not strictly comparable @uscensusbureau https://t.co/AUOczQWhql pic.twitter.com/QEXgHUVhOc
— Richard Fry (@r_fry1) September 12, 2018
Of note, 16.8% of adults age 25-34 live at home with their parents (who probably had big plans for their rooms).
Other highlights from the report:
-
The percentage of people without health insurance coverage for the entire 2017 calendar year was 8.8 percent, or 28.5 million, not statistically different from 2016 (8.8 percent or 28.1 million people). Between 2016 and 2017, the number of people with health insurance coverage increased by 2.3 million, up to 294.6 million.
-
The real median income of households maintained by a native-born person increased 1.5 percent between 2016 and 2017, while the 2017 real median income of households maintained by a foreign-born person was not statistically different from 2016.
-
The 2017 real median earnings of all male workers increased 3.0 percent from 2016 to $44,408, while real median earnings for their female counterparts ($31,610) saw no statistically significant change between 2016 and 2017.
-
In 2017, the real median earnings of men ($52,146) and women ($41,977) working full-time, year-round each decreased from their respective 2016 medians by 1.1 percent.
However, amid all this ‘good’ news, there’s one small problem…
-
Between 2016 and 2017, people with at least a bachelor’s degree were the only group to have an increase in the poverty rate or the number of people in poverty. Among this group, the poverty rate increased 0.3 percentage points and the number in poverty increased by 363,000 individuals between 2016 and 2017. Even with this increase, among educational attainment groups, people with at least a bachelor’s degree had the lowest poverty rates in 2017.
-
In 2017, 8.8 percent of people, or 28.5 million, did not have health insurance at any point during the year. The uninsured rate and number of uninsured in 2017 were not statistically different from 2016 (8.8 percent or 28.1 million).
-
In 2017, private health insurance coverage continued to be more prevalent than government coverage, at 67.2 percent and 37.7 percent, respectively. Of the subtypes of health insurance coverage, employer-based insurance was the most common, covering 56.0 percent of the population for some or all of the calendar year, followed by Medicaid (19.3 percent), Medicare (17.2 percent), direct-purchase coverage (16.0 percent), and military coverage (4.8 percent).
via RSS https://ift.tt/2pd0aXI Tyler Durden