Income up, but there's a catch - Data show households are earning more by working longer. Also, 5% more people lack health insurance.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy produced slight improvement in income and poverty levels last year, but failed to bring widespread benefits as the number of people without health insurance climbed to 47 million, according to a major report released Tuesday that reflects the nation's underlying economic anxieties.
In its annual report on poverty, income and health insurance, the Census Bureau said that median household income rose slightly to $48,201, but mainly because people were working longer hours, not because they were being paid more.
The nation's official poverty rate inched down to 12.3%. Again, the improvement was not broad-based, but the result of gains among a single segment of the population: older people.
The number of people without health insurance jumped by 2.2 million, or about 5%, the biggest increase since 2002. And a trend of steady progress in reducing the number of uninsured children seemingly lurched into reverse, as more than 600,000 youths were added to the rolls of the uninsured, an increase of nearly 8%.
The bleak statistic on children is released at a time when President Bush is threatening to veto legislation that would expand a health insurance program for children of the working poor, and that seemed certain to galvanize opposition to the administration's stand.
The economy's performance on issues of such importance as income and health coverage helps explain Americans' persistent pessimism about their circumstances, including a sharp drop in consumer confidence reported Tuesday by the Conference Board, a business research group.
"As John Kennedy pointed out: 'A rising tide raises all boats,' " said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "What the census numbers reveal is that while most boats got a little lift last year, the big gains of the recovery have accrued to the yachts."
Bush portrayed the numbers as a vindication of his economic policies of low taxes and minimal regulation. "The census data show that income gains in 2006 were substantial and widespread across all income categories. And the largest percentage income gains occurred for people in the bottom 20% of incomes," the president said in a statement.
Some analysts said that what Bush failed to note was that, in dollar terms, the gains near the top were 10 times those in the bottom 20%, and for most Americans, improvement was not the result of raises, but more work.
