A tightening labor market and Obamacare delivered income growth and health coverage to working
families in 2015
Poverty fell sharply, middle-class incomes rose steeply, and more people had health coverage last year according toTuesday’s report on household economic conditions from the Census Bureau — the best evidence to date that the growing economy is finally reaching households that had been left behind.
Median household income rose 5.2 percent in real terms, from $53,700 in 2014 to $56,500 in 2015, a gain of $2,800, the first real gain since 2007, and the largest gain on record back to 1967, when these data begin. This brings the real median household income just slightly below its 2007 peak (the difference is statistically insignificant). For black and Hispanic households, real median income rose 4.1 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively (figure below). Income gains were significantly larger at the middle and bottom of the income scale relative to the top, meaning lower income inequality.
Health coverage continued to increase, as the Affordable Care Act’s coverage measures — the Medicaid expansion and state exchanges — diffuse across land. Today’s data show that the share without coverage fell last year to 9.1 percent, down from the 2014 uninsured rate of 10.4 percent, meaning 4 million more people got health coverage.
These very positive results were largely driven by two factors: a stronger labor market that finally began to lift the living standards of low- and middle-income working families and the diffusion of health coverage due to the Affordable Care Act. In other words, both the economy and public policy were finally pulling for the middle class and the poor. Given the powerful forces of inequality pushing the other way, the results show the extent to which this one-two punch — full employment and progressive policies – -can lift the living standards of working families.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/13/a-tightening-labor-market-and-obamacare-delivered-income-growth-and-health-coverage-to-working-families-in-2015/?utm_term=.c9765b241a41
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