From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (http://www.cbpp.org):
Here’s what we know:
- Official poverty rate went down while median income stayed the same: The official poverty rate fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2018, from 12.3 percent in 2017 to 11.8 percent in 2018, and median income remained statistically unchanged at $63,179.
- Key anti-poverty programs reduce hardship for tens of millions of Americans — and without them, poverty would be dramatically worse.Today we learned that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and low-income portion of the Child Tax Credit lifted 7.9 million people out of poverty in 2018 and reduced the severity of poverty for millions more. SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) and rental assistance also each lifted 3 million people out of poverty.
- Number and share of Americans without health insurance took a turn for the worse. The percentage of people who are uninsured rose in both Census surveys (the Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey) — the first time this has happened in both surveys since enactment of the Affordable Care Act.
As CBPP President Bob Greenstein noted about the health insurance coverage numbers in his statement: “This backsliding almost certainly reflects — at least in part — Trump Administration policies to weaken public health coverage.” (For more analysis of the Census health insurance numbers, check out this deeper dive by one of our senior health policy analysts.)
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