Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005

The Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage report (BIG pdf) is up. Short version is that median household income has gone up for the first time since 1998-99, by about $500. In real dollars, the hypothetical average American family is earning about what it was in 1998. Which means that the typical American family has seen none of the payoff from the rather remarkable productivity gains since 1998.

The percentage of housholds in poverty is statistically unchanged, but the percentage of Americans without health insurance has increased to 15.9%, representing 46.6 million uninsured people.

I'll be looking at the report in more detail later, but that's the short version.