September 10, 2009 | 8:03 a.m.
By Don Lee
The Census Bureau said that median household incomes fell 3.6% from 2007 to $50,303 last year. That was the biggest decline since 1991. It was caused by millions of job cuts by employers in 2008.In addition, Bush tax policies have also affected the drop in middle class income.
People without medical coverage increased from 45.7 million in 2007. This was expected to have risen more sharply last year. The overall number was lowered by expanding government safety-net programs and rising Medicare enrolment. Many aging baby boomers had enrolled in Medicare. The number of uninsured children fell to 7.3 million from 8.1 million in 2007. This was due to the S-CHIPS bill that was signed into law shortly after President Obama took office.
The uninsured rate of 15.4% for medical insurance last year was not statistically different from 2007.
However, analysts expect the number of uninsured and the official poverty rate, which is 13.2 per cent, to keep rising this year and next. Although the U.S. economy is expected to resume growing in the second half of this year, about 3.8 million payroll jobs have been eliminated since January. Unemployment, currently at 9.7%, is projected to grow slightly.
More workers and their families this year have slipped into poverty or lost their health coverage, or both. Only 58.5% of the nation's population last year were covered by private insurance provided through their employers. the Census Bureau indicated that percentage has been steadily decreasing.
About 39.8 million people fell below the poverty line last year including more than 14 million children.
don.lee@latimes.com
Rightardia comment: A lot of this can be explained by 20 years of GOP rule in Washington. When a GOP Congress was elected during the Clinton era, the Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program was eliminated that ended the major welfare program in the US. The only other important welfare programs that survived were Food Stamps and Medicaid.
Supply side economics aka trickle down that started during the Reagan era and continued during the Bush presidency made the rich richer and fractured the middle class. George W. Bush even tried to give the remainder of the US welfare programs early in his presidency to churches. The churches weren't interested.
A real irony in the US is that the states that have the highest poverty rates and the highest percentage of citizens that don't pay income tax are hot beds of conservatism.
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