The U.S. Census Bureau announced that real median household income increased by 5.2 percent between 2014 and 2015 while the official poverty rate decreased 1.2 percentage points.
At the same time, the percentage of people without health insurance coverage decreased.
Median household income in the United States in 2015 was $56,516, an increase in real terms of 5.2 percent from the 2014 median income of $53,718.
This is the first annual increase in median household income since 2007, the year before the most recent recession.
The nation’s official poverty rate in 2015 was 13.5 percent, with 43.1 million people in poverty, 3.5 million fewer than in 2014.
The 1.2 percentage point decrease in the poverty rate from 2014 to 2015 represents the largest annual percentage point drop in poverty since 1999.
The percentage of people without health insurance coverage for the entire 2015 calendar year was 9.1 percent, down from 10.4 percent in 2014. The number of people without health insurance declined to 29.0 million from 33.0 million over the period.
The findings are contained in two reports: Income and Poverty in the United States: 2015 and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2015.
The 2015 real median earnings of men and women who worked full time, year-round between 2014 and 2015 increased 1.5 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively.
This is the first significant annual increase in median earnings for men and women since 2009. The difference between the 1.5 percent change and 2.7 percent change was not statistically significant.
In 2015, the median earnings of women who worked full time, year-round ($40,742) was 80 percent of that for men working full time, year-round ($51,212) — not statistically different from the 2014 ratio.
The female-to-male earnings ratio has not shown a statistically significant annual increase since 2007.
The number of men and women working full time, year-round increased by 1.4 million and 1.0 million, respectively, between 2014 and 2015. An estimated 73.9 percent of working men with earnings and 61.3 percent of working women with earnings worked full time, year-round in 2015, not statistically different from 2014. The difference between the 2014 to 2015 increases in the number of men and women full time, year-round workers was not statistically significant.
Census Bureau study: Household income increases for first time since 2007 : Real Estate Weekly
