U.S. poverty rate drops for first time since 2006

The U.S. poverty rate has decreased for the first time since 2006, according to U.S. Census figures released Tuesday.

Children's poverty also declined, while median household income barely changed between 2012 and 2013.

The report further shows that 42 million people, 13.4 percent of Americans, were without health-insurance coverage in 2013.

The data were compiled in the 2014 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, which describes conditions in 2013. Local poverty numbers for Philadelphia and its surrounding counties will be released Thursday.

The proportion of people living in poverty fell from 15 percent in 2012 to 14.5 percent in 2013.

The number of Americans living in poverty remained at 45.3 million people, a figure that has not changed significantly in three years.

The poverty rate for children under 18 nationwide dropped from 21.8 percent in 2012, to 19.9 percent in 2013.

The report also pegs the median household income in the United States in 2013 at $51,939, not statistically different than the 2012 mark of $51,759.

Academics and other poverty experts interpreted the report as good news and bad news.

That poverty declined is welcome news on any level, they said. But the poverty rate is still higher than it was in 2000, when it was calculated at 11.3 percent, experts said.

And while child poverty has fallen, it's still "a huge number," around 20 percent, or one in five under age 18, said Curtis Skinner, a director at Columbia University's National Center for Children in Poverty.

Meanwhile, the median-income numbers in the report show that while the rich are doing well, the rest of America is not.

"We have now had a 13-year period of wage stagnation," said Sheldon Danziger, director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. "Wages are flat."

Danziger mentioned a chart in the report that shows that adjusted for inflation, men in 1972 had higher median incomes than they do today.

While it is not possible to attribute any particular improvements in the poverty rate to a single reason, Census officials suggested that levels of poverty for the general population and for children may have decreased because of changes in work patterns.

Specifically, a noticeable number of people moved from part-time work done part of the year to more substantial jobs.

The number of men working full time, year-round jobs increased by 1.8 million between 2012 and 2013, the report shows. The number of women went up by one million.

Many of the workers who improved their lot are parents who were able to lift their children out of poverty, said Chuck Nelson, an assistant division chief in the social, economic, housing, and statistics division of the census.

Still, academics and advocates said, the wages people received for these jobs were low.

Overall, the modest improvement in the poverty rate "won't knock your socks off," said Sharon Parrott, a vice president at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank.

The conservative Heritage Foundation said in a statement that the census report proves that the War on Poverty, which started 50 years ago, has been a failure. The reason, the foundation said, is that even after the federal government spent trillions to combat poverty, the poverty rate is nearly the same as the 1967 rate.

Other academics disagree with that interpretation. Columbia researchers have shown that the money spent to help the poor has prevented the poverty rate from skyrocketing, according to Skinner.

For example, Skinner said, Medicare and Social Security were "enormously important for reducing what was once a high poverty rate for the elderly."

The poverty rate that the census reports does not include food stamp benefits or tax credits for workers, both proven to lower poverty rates, experts said.

Also released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday were health-insurance coverage estimates for 2013, before most provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect.

They showed a one-year decline in the uninsured of two-tenths of one percentage point nationally. Pennsylvania was unchanged; New Jersey was one of a dozen states that experienced small increases, although its half-percentage-point rise was one of only two that were statistically significant.

More recent surveys have found notable drops in rates of the uninsured since most of Obamacare kicked in on Jan. 1.

Gallup last month reported a 3.4 percentage point drop nationally from 2013 to mid-2014. New Jersey was down 3.1 percentage points. Pennsylvania, which has yet to implement the law's optional Medicaid expansion, was down 0.9 percentage points.