Poverty rate stuck at 15 percent

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The nation’s poverty rate stood still at 15 percent last year, the sixth-straight year that it has failed to improve.

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that 46.5 million Americans — or more than 1 in 7 — were living in poverty last year. That is not statistically different from the number of impoverished in 2011.

The median household income was $51,017, unchanged from the previous year, after two consecutive annual declines. The share of people without health insurance declined slightly, from 15.7 percent to 15.4 percent.

The last significant decline in the poverty rate came in 2006, during the Bush administration and before the housing bubble burst. In 2011, the poverty rate dipped to 15 percent from 15.1 percent, but census officials said that change was statistically insignificant.

For the past year, the official poverty line was an annual income of $23,492 for a family of four.

The latest poverty numbers present unwelcome news for President Barack Obama as he seeks credit for an economic turnaround after the 2007-09 recession. He said Monday that congressional Republicans would reverse recent economic gains if they took uncompromising stands in connection with looming budget deadlines.

The Census Bureau’s annual report offers a snapshot of the economic well-being of U.S. households for 2012, when the unemployment rate averaged 8.1 percent after reaching an average high of 9.6 percent in 2010. Typically, the poverty rate tends to move in a similar direction as the unemployment rate, so many analysts had been expecting a modest decline in poverty.

The latest census data show that the gap between rich and poor was largely unchanged over the last year, after increasing steadily since 1993.

GOP conservatives have been demanding a delay of Obama’s new health-care law as the price for supporting continued federal-government spending. The House also is expected to consider a bill this week that would cut food stamps for the poor by an estimated $4 billion annually — 10 times the size of cuts passed by the Democratic Senate — and allow states to put broad new work requirements in place for recipients.

“This lack of improvement in poverty is disappointing and discouraging,” said John Iceland, a former Census Bureau chief of the poverty and health statistics branch who is now a Penn State sociology professor. “This lack of progress in poverty indicates that these small improvements in the economy are not yet being equally shared by all.”

Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in poverty, agreed.

“Everything’s on hold, but at a bad level: poverty and income did not change much in 2012,” he said. “So child poverty is still too high, and family income is still too low. The recession may be over, but try to tell that to these struggling families. Don’t expect things to change until the American economy begins to generate more jobs.”

Broken down by state, Mississippi had the highest share of poor people, at 22 percent, according to rough calculations by the Census Bureau. On the other end of the scale, New Hampshire had the lowest share, at 8.1 percent.