In a report last year by the US Census Bureau, the poverty rate dropped significantly to 14.5 percent, the first drop since 2006.
The Latino population was the only ethnic group with a significant 2.1 percentage drop, from 25.6 percent to 23.5 percent. It was a heartening change all around, with the number of Latinos living in poverty also falling from 13.6 to 12.7 million. Even the median annual income for families rose 3.5 percent to $40,963, marking the first annual increase since 2000, according to the Census Bureau.
“It’s much better that poverty is going down than what it’s been doing, which has been going up and remaining stagnant,” said Sheldon Danziger, president of the Russell Sage Foundation in support of researching poverty and social issues in order to fight them.
“If there are going to be improvements in the poverty level, you want to see them among children, and you want to see them among the race and ethnic groups that haven’t been doing well,” said William H. Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Analysts also reported a noteworthy drop in the child poverty rate, which fell to 19.9 percent last year from 21.8 percent. The last time the child poverty numbers dropped more than 0.2 percent was over 14 years ago.
The number of people who are fully employed year-round rose by about 2.8 million to 105.8 million, including nearly a million households with children under 18. This also fueled the significant drop in child poverty ratings in over a decade.
Despite the good news, many still believe the stagnant trends in recent years only show that more work needs to be done to wipe out poverty in the US.
“The fact unquestionably remains that the economic recovery has not done much to lift the living standards of most poor and middle-income households,” said Jared Bernstein, a fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and former economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden.
Referring to the annual income index, the income for the typical US household barely budged last year, a rise of just $180 to $51,939. Median household income adjusted for inflation remained about 8% below where it was in 2007, before the recession.
Analysts believe increasing the federal minimum wage, an initiative already being proposed and enacted in several states including California, will certainly help struggling Americans to make ends meet.
Last year, with inflation and population growth taken into account, there were an estimated 45.3 million living below the poverty threshold. This meant an annual income of less than $23,624 for a household of four.
Many feel optimistic that the poverty rate is on a gradual downswing, after remaining stagnant at 15 percent since 2010. Hope also arises with the declining economic numbers for the Latino population especially.
“US-born Latinos tend to have more education, tend to be English-speaking, and those things will lead to somewhat higher earnings,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center.
He attributed the rise in income to more younger US-born Latinos entering the workforce, and said that the recent slowdown of Latino immigrants is also a contributing factor.
More people are also working full-time nowadays, so the nation’s unemployment rate has been dropping sharply. This year, the rate has gone from 6.7 to 6.1 percent in August.
“Yes, it’s terrific that more people are working full time,” commented Danziger, who cautions the public to not overlook broad trends and economic history. “But if we had a higher minimum wage and companies would pay more, then we’d make much more progress.”
(With reports from the Los Angeles Times.)
