State’s ’07 poverty rate up to 17.9%
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008
Arkansas’ poverty rate last year inched up to 17. 9 percent from 17. 3 percent in 2006, with about 492, 000 people living in poverty, according to census data released Tuesday.
A family of four is considered to be living in poverty if it makes less than $ 21, 200 a year.
While poverty rose, median household income in Arkansas increased to $ 38, 134 in 2007 from $ 37, 511 in 2006. Both numbers are expressed in 2007 dollars.
“We don’t see huge gains — and in terms of where Arkansas ’ position is, we still see ourselves lagging the rest of the country enormously,” said Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Only West Virginia and Mississippi had lower median household incomes than Arkansas did last year, census data show. Deck said Arkansas’ median income is highly correlated with low educational attainment in the state.
Nationwide, the median household income grew 1. 9 percent from 2006, to $ 50, 740 last year. The number of people living in poverty fell, to 38. 1 million from 38. 8 million in 2006, and the poverty rate dropped from 13. 3 percent to 13 percent.
The poverty and income numbers are from the American Community Survey and are not the only way the government measures poverty and income. The government’s Current Population Survey showed the number of people living in poverty nationwide increasing.
Also last year, the number of uninsured people nationwide fell in what The Associated Press noted was the first such drop in the Bush administration.
The number of uninsured people fell from 47 million to 45. 7 million, and the rate of uninsured people decreased from 15. 8 percent to 15. 3 percent.
In Arkansas, the percentage of uninsured people has grown 0. 7 percentage point, from 16. 8 percent in 2004-05 to 17. 5 percent in 2006-07. From 2000-01, 14. 8 percent of Arkansans lacked health insurance. About a half-million people in the state currently do not have insurance.
“We have not seen a reversal in our state of the erosion, especially of family coverage, in the private sector,” said Kevin Ryan, executive associate director for the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement.
David Johnson, who oversees the U. S. Census division that produced the statistics, told The Associated Press that “a lot of the fall is due to the increase in public coverage.”
The AP said that the number of uninsured children also fell last year, “after an increase in 2006 that had interrupted years of progress in getting more kids covered.”
Ryan also believes that expanded Medicaid coverage and insurance changes in states like Massachusetts could be contributing to the slight drop in the uninsured population nationwide.
“I think there’s a real offset going on with Medicaid and other publicly financed programs both nationally and in terms of Arkansas,” he said. Without those factors, “it’s likely that the decrease in coverage [statewide ] would have been worse.”
Texas has the highest rate of uninsured people at 24. 8 percent, while Massachusetts had the lowest at 7. 9 percent.
And many advocacy groups and think tanks were quick to say Tuesday that last year’s numbers do not reflect the full impact of the current economic slowdown.
The Arkansas rate today is higher than in 2001, a recession year, when the poverty rate was 15. 4 percent. The U. S. rate in 2001 was likewise lower, at 12. 1 percent, than last year.
“What’s interesting is that Arkansas does mirror the national trend, which is that poverty in 2007 is higher than it was in 2001, which is a surprising outcome at the end of a period of economic growth,” said Nick Johnson, director of the state fiscal project at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, D. C. “We know things have gotten worse for people during this economic downturn, so the fact that even before the economy started souring, that poverty rates were so high, suggests that now people must be really hurting.”
Not everyone is concerned about the census numbers.
Devon Herrick of the Dallasbased National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank, said the government overestimates the number of uninsured people nationwide. The surveys count some people who are uninsured for only shorts periods during the year, he said in a phone interview.
“Of all the people who are uninsured today, less than half will still be uninsured 12 months from now,” he said separately in a release.
Nationwide, much of the increase of uninsured people in the past decade came from population growth, the release said.
The center also argues that people don’t sign up for government programs because they know they can obtain care when they’re sick, because federal law forbids emergency rooms from turning away patients who need critical care. “They’re kind of de facto insured if they can obtain after-the-fact care,” Herrick said.
But Johnson, of the Centers for Budget and Policy Priorities, said, “I think everybody knows there’s a big difference between getting care at the emergency room and getting regular preventive care from a physician. There’s ample evidence that suggests the quantity and quality of care you get when you don’t have insurance is less than when you do.”
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