This report presents data on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States based on information collected in the 2005 and earlier Annual Social and Economic Supplements (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Real median household income showed no change between 2003 and 2004.1 Both the number of people in poverty and the poverty rate increased between 2003 and 2004. The number of people without health insurance coverage, as well as the number of people with health insurance coverage increased between 2003 and 2004, while the percentages with and without health insurance coverage showed no change between 2003 and 2004.

These results were not uniform across demographic groups. For example, Blacks and Hispanics experienced no change in poverty, and Asians had an increase in health insurance coverage.

This report has three main sections— income, poverty, and health insurance coverage. Each one presents estimates by characteristics such as race, Hispanic origin, nativity, and region. Other topics include earnings of full-time, year-round workers; poverty among families; and health insurance coverage of children. This report does not include data by metropolitan area status due to the transition from a 1990-based sample design to a Census 2000-based sample design. The 2005 ASEC sample is a mixture of both sample designs, which used different definitions of metropolitan areas. The report concludes with a section discussing income, poverty, and health insurance coverage for states using 2- and 3-year averages.

The income and poverty estimates shown in this report are based solely on money income before taxes and do not include the value of noncash benefits such as food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, public housing, and employer-provided fringe benefits.

Later this year, the Census Bureau will release detailed tables on alternative measures of income and poverty, which include taxes and selected noncash benefits.

The CPS is one of the longest running surveys conducted by the Census Bureau. The CPS ASEC asks detailed questions about income from over 50 sources. The key purpose of the CPS ASEC is to provide timely and detailed estimates of income, poverty, and health insurance coverage and to measure change for those estimates at both the national and state level.

The Census Bureau also reports on income and poverty based on the American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS is part of the 2010 Decennial Census Program and will replace the long form sample. The ACS offers broad, comprehensive information on social, economic, and housing data and is designed to provide this information at many levels of geography, and most importantly, for local communities.

The ACS collects basic information about income using eight questions and does not collect information about health insurance.

Since the CPS ASEC produces the most complete and thorough estimates of income and poverty, the Census Bureau recommends that people use this data source for national estimates.

While both the CPS ASEC and the ACS offer income and poverty estimates at the state level, it is important not to draw any conclusions from comparisons across surveys; for example, it is inappropriate to compare a state estimate of poverty in the CPS ASEC to a different state in the ACS. The ACS is the only direct survey source of data for local areas—metropolitan areas, counties, places, and, in the future, neighborhoods.

The CPS ASEC provides reliable estimates of the net change from one year to the next in the overall distribution of economic characteristics of the population, but it does not show how those characteristics change for the same person, family, or household.

Longitudinal measures of income, poverty, and health insurance coverage that are based on following the same people over time are available from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).

Estimates derived from SIPP data answer questions such as:

• What percentage of households move up or down the income distribution over time?
• How many people remain in poverty over time?
• How long do people without health insurance tend to remain uninsured?

Download Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004

PDF format, 3.7MB, 85Pages.

By Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, Cheryl Hill Lee

Current Population Reports
Consumer Income

U.S. Department of Commerce
Economics and Statistics Administration
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU

Contents:

Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in
the United States: 2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Source of Estimates and Statistical Accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Dynamics of Economic Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Income in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Race and Hispanic Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Nativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Income Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Work Experience and Earnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Poverty in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Race and Hispanic Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Nativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Depth of Poverty Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Ratio of Income to Poverty Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Income Deficit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Health Insurance Coverage in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
What is Health Insurance Coverage? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Type of Coverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Race and Hispanic Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Nativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Economic Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Children’s Health Insurance Coverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
State Level Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Poverty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Health Insurance Coverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Model-Based State Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
CPS Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Additional Data and Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

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