Household incomes rise but insurance rates fall

PBN Staff

08/28/2007

WASHINGTON – More Americans went without health insurance last year, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.
The percentage of U.S. residents who lack insurance rose to 15.8 percent last year from 15.3 percent in 2005, the EPI found, as the total number of uninsured nationwide swelled to 47.0 million, an increase of 2.2 million or 4.9 percent from the year before.
Since 2000, the number of Americans without health coverage has risen by 8.6 million or 2.1 percent.
The EPI report cited “further unraveling of the employer-based system,” as workplace-based health coverage declined for the sixth year in a row, from 64.2 percent of the population in 2000 to 59.7 percent in 2006. The decline “is particularly striking for dependents,” it said, adding that “In the last two years, the number of uninsured children rose by 1 million, from 7.7 million in 2004 to 8.7 million in 2006.”
(The percentage of uninsured children in Rhode Island was steady last year, however, while childhood poverty rates in the state declined, according to a separate analysis of the same data released today by Rhode Island Kids Count. READ MORE)
The news was better on income, the EPI said. Poverty rang up its first significant decline since 2000, while real household income – after adjustment for inflation – rose by about $360 or 0.7 percent last year, in its second consecutive increase.
Still, those gains went largely to the wealthiest 20 percent of U.S. households, whose median income rose by 1.0 percent while incomes for the other four-fifths of households declined. The share of total income going to the top one-fifth of households was 50.5 percent, “the highest share on record going back to 1967,” the EPI said. “The middle-income share was 14.5 percent, the lowest on record. The bottom-income share has been 3.4 percent [also a historic low] since 2003.”
Among “working-age” households (headed by someone 64 or younger), the median income increased 1.3 percent in its first bump-up since 2000. Yet annual earnings by full-time, year-round workers fell for the third year in a row; the decline was 1.1 percent for men and 1.2 percent for women.

The Economic Policy Institute analysis, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey, can be seen at www.epi.org.

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