Our address was selected at random to be part of the Census Bureau’s surveys. It involves being visited once/month for four months, then being “out of the survey” for eight months, then being back in the survey for four months again. They ask questions about how many people live here, do we both work, are we working full time, how many hours is that, etc. Each month also has a supplemental survey. One month it was about going out to eat, one month it was about smoking. This month it was about poverty and about health insurance. As part of that, we got a brochure from the Census Bureau on the latest stats on poverty and health insurance. Some lowlights:
– Earnings went up 1.1% last year, but real median income (they do not explain what this is, but it is different from earnings) has gone down 1.8% for men and 1.3% for women from 2004 to 2005. This has gone down for two years for men and three years for women.
– The number of uninsured went up 1.9 million people from 2004 to 2005, to 46.6 million people (15.9% of the population).
– 12.6% of Americans live in poverty (37 million people).
It is a little ironic (or good timing) that this survey happened the day before our group leaves for Habitat. I don’t have great answers to help the poor across the country, but at least some teenagers can help three families out.
The median, as I understand it, is the midpoint in all the incomes in the country: half of households will be richer than this point, half poorer. (This is different from the mean, or average, income, which is simply the total amount of income in the country divided by the the number of people – the mean can, I believe, be more easily skewed by extremes.)
The median income is most useful to see what is happening in the middle of the income bracket – i.e. what is happening to the middle class. The middle class, according to your data, is getting poorer. The median may go down even while “earnings” (average income?) goes up – that simply means the rich are getting rich faster than the middle class is getting poorer.