Median Household Income Increases First Time Since 2007

The U.S. Census Bureau announced on Tuesday that median household income increased to $56,516 in 2015, a jump of 5.2 percent from the 2014 median income of $53,718 and the first increase since 2007.  However, real median household income in 2015 was 1.6 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the Great Recession, and 2.4 percent lower than the median household income peak, which occurred in 1999. Ten states (HI, KY, MT, NH, OR, RI, TN, VT, WI and WY) and the District of Columbia saw median household incomes increase by more than 5 percent, although with the margin of error it is possible that some of these states saw increases of less than 1 percent, according to data presented in Table 1 of Household Income: 2015. Only Puerto Rico saw the median household income decline from 2014 levels; ID and NJ saw increases of less than 1 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau also announced that the nation’s official poverty rate in 2015 was 13.5 percent, a 1.2 percentage point decrease in the poverty rate from 2014. The decrease represents the largest annual percentage point drop in poverty since 1999. The findings are contained in Income and Poverty in the United States: 2015.