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US household income posted a record increase in 2015 after years of stagnation, suggesting the recovery from the Great Recession was finally lifting ordinary citizens who had been largely left behind. The Census Bureau said on Tuesday that median household income surged 5.2 percent last year to $56,500, the highest since 2007, in large part due to solid employment gains. The jump was the biggest since record keeping began in 1968.
Trudi Renwick, an assistant division chief at the Census Bureau, said on a conference call with reporters it was striking that median household income rose across the board. "It's up for almost every age group of household heads. It's up for almost every racial group," except Asians, she said. Concerns about income growth have hung over the US presidential election, with many Americans expressing dissatisfaction with an economy that has managed only sluggish expansion since the 2007-2009 recession.
President Barack Obama hailed the report as evidence that his administration's economic policies were paying off, but said more needed to be done to put unemployed Americans back to work. "The Republicans don't like to hear good news right now. But it's important just to understand this is a big deal," Obama in Philadelphia, where he was campaigning for the Democratic Party's presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
With incomes rising, the number of people living in poverty fell 3.5 million to 43.1 million last year. That pushed the 2015 poverty rate down to 13.5 percent from 14.8 percent in 2014. The poverty rate has continued to edge down since hitting a 17-year high in 2010. The latest drop is the largest percentage point decline since 1999, Census officials said. In another encouraging sign, the number of residents without health insurance dropped to 29 million last year from 33 million in 2014. Nearly 91 percent of people in the United States had health coverage, up from 89.6 percent the previous year.

Copyright Reuters, 2016

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