WASHINGTON _ With unemployment steadily declining and more people working full-time in year-round jobs, household incomes in the United States rose moderately last year, and the poverty rate fell to the lowest point in more than a decade, according to new federal government data.
But in another important measure of economic well-being, the share of Americans without medical insurance remained unchanged in 2017, ending a three-year trend of improving health coverage that was largely the result of Obamacare.
The Census Bureau found that 8.8 percent of the U.S. population went without medical insurance for all of 2017, the same rate as in 2016. In 2013, before the Affordable Care Act took full effect, 13.3 percent were uninsured.
The Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage mostly showed continued progress in 2017 _ 10 years after the start of the Great Recession caused American incomes to begin to tumble.
The nation's median income _ the midpoint where half makes more and half less _ didn't start rising again until 2014. Last year, it reached $61,400. On an inflation-adjusted basis, that was up 1.8 percent from 2016, a much slower increase than in the previous two years but still the highest point on record.
The share of people living in poverty dropped to 12.3 percent. That was down from 12.7 percent in 2016. Still, that means almost 40 million people in the U.S. lived in poverty last year, including 12.8 million under the age of 18.
By the Census Bureau's definition, children and adults are considered poor if they live in households with incomes below the poverty line, which in 2017 was $24,858 for a family of four.
