Income, Poverty Health Insurance in the US Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States This article presents data on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States based on information collected in the 2004 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Real median household income showed no change between 2002 and 2003. Both the number of people in poverty and the poverty rate increased between 2002 and 2003. The number and percentage of people without health insurance coverage, as well as the number of people with health insurance coverage, rose. These changes were not uniform across demographic groups. For example, Hispanics experienced declines in real median household income, Asians experienced increases in poverty, and non-Hispanic Whites had declines in health insurance coverage. The income and poverty estimates shown in this article are based solely on money income before taxes and do not include the value of noncash benefits such as food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, public housing, and employer-provided fringe benefits. Two forthcoming reports, one on alternative measures of income and the other on alternative measures of poverty, scheduled for release later this year, will discuss the effects of taxes and noncash benefits. They will be accompanied by a third report focusing on material measures of well-being. The Annual Social and Economic Supplement provides reliable estimates of the net change from one year to the next in the overall distribution of economic characteristics of the population, but it does not show how those characteristics change for the same person, family, or household. Instead, longitudinal measures of income, poverty, and health insurance coverage that are based on following the same people over time are available from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). 1 All income values are adjusted to reflect 2003 dollars. ’Real" refers to comparisons of income after adjusting for inflation. The adjustment is based on percentage changes in prices between earlier years and 2003 and is computed by dividing the annual average Consumer Price Index for 2003 by the annual average for earlier years. The CPI-U values for 1947 to 2003 are available on the Internet at www.census.gov. 2 Federal surveys now ask people to report one or more races. Therefore, two ways of defining a group such as Asian are possible. The first includes those who reported Asian and no other race; the second includes everyone who reported Asian regardless of whether they also reported another race. Data using both concepts are presented in this report. In this report, ’non-Hispanic Whites" refers to people who are not Hispanic who reported only White as their race. Because Hispanics may be of any race, data in this report for Hispanics overlap with data for racial groups. Being Hispanic was reported by 11.8 percent of White householders who reported only one race; 2.7 percent of Black householders who reported only one race; 26.5 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native householders who reported only one race; and 10.0 percent of Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander householders who reported only one race. Source of Estimates and Statistical Accuracy The estimates in this report are based on data collected by the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. As with all surveys, the estimates may differ from the actual values because of sampling variation or other factors. All statements in this report have undergone statistical testing, and all comparisons are significant at the 90-percent confidence level, unless otherwise noted. Estimates derived from SIPP data answer such questions as: What percentage of households move up or down the income distribution over time? How many people remain in poverty over time? How long do people without health insurance tend to remain uninsured? The text box ’Dynamics of Economic Well-Being" provides more information. INCOME IN THE UNITED STATES Highlights Real median household money income remained unchanged between 2002 and 2003 at a level of $43,318, following two consecutive years of decline Median income remained unchanged for all types of family and non-family households (such as married-couple households and single individuals) between 2002 and 2003. Real median household income remained unchanged for non-Hispanic White, Black, and Asian households between 2002 and 2003.3 Households with Hispanic householders (who can be of any race) experienced a real decline in median income of 2.6 percent between 2002 and 2003 The most commonly used measure of household income inequality, the Gini index, did not change between 2002 and 2003. The share of aggregate income received by the lowest quintile declined from 3.5 percent to 3.4 percent, as did the real income level delineating the 20th percentile of household income, from $18,326 to $17,984 (a 1.9 percent decline in real terms). The 80th percentile of household income increased 1.1 percent, from $85,941 to $86,867 in real terms The real median earnings of men who worked full-time, year-round remained unchanged between 2002 and 2003 at $40,668. The real median earnings of the comparable group of women declined by 0.6 percent to $30,724, as shown in Table 1 and Figure 2. Reflecting the fall in the earnings of women, the female-to-male earnings ratio declined from 0.77 to 0.76 between 2002 and 2003 The last time the female-to-male earnings ratio experienced an annual decline was between 1998 and 1999. Dynamics of Economic Well-Being With monthly data available for characteristics such as labor force participation, income, and health insurance coverage, SIPP provides a unique opportunity to learn about the dynamic nature of the experiences of individuals, families, or households over the course of the panel. Thus, it enables us to measure the extensive economic mobility of people in the U.S. economy.4 For example, recent SIPP reports have shown that: Of households in the lowest income quintile in 1996, 38 percent were in a higher quintile in 1999; of those originally in the highest income quintile, 34 percent were in a lower quintile 3 years later. About one-half (49.5 percent) of people who were in poverty in 1996 were not in poverty in 1999. For people who became uninsured, the average length of time without health insurance over the 1996-1999 period was 5.6 months.

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