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Household Income Growth Stalls
September 11, 2019
After three straight years of growth, Americans’ incomes were basically flat in 2018, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The median household income was $63,179 last year, an increase of just 0.9 percent, an amount that census officials described as statistically insignificant.
The figures come as part of a broader look at the nation’s financial health, which saw both promising and worrying trends. The poverty rate fell by half a percentage point to 11.8 percent for the year. This is the fourth consecutive year that has seen a decline in poverty and marks the first time that the rate has fallen below the level it was at when the recession began in 2007.
The number of uninsured Americans increased for the first time in nearly a decade. 2018 saw 8.5 percent of the nation, or 27.5 million people, go without health insurance at some point in the year. This is the first increase in the uninsured since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
