According to the Census Bureau, the inflation adjusted level of median income jumped $1304 or 3.5% in 1998 to $38,885. That makes four consecutive years of gains and the sharpest increase in more than a decade. More interestingly, "virtually every type of household on which the government keeps tabs in every region of the country managed to hit new highs or maintain a previously achieved one." For example, the median income of Latino households grew by 4.8% to $28,300, which is the highest income figure for Latino households in the two decades separate records have been kept on them. Black households maintained their record median income of $25,400. These broad income gains had the effect of pushing down the poverty rate by half a percentage point to 12.7 percent, the lowest level since 1979. There were 1.l million fewer people in poverty in 1998 than in 1997. The current poverty line is $16,600 for a family of four.
Some additional information courtesy of the Washington
Post: During the current economic boom, unemployment for blacks as
a whole has fallen from 14.1 to 7.8 percent, and among black teenagers
the fall is from 40.5% to 28.6%. For Hispanics, the drop is from
11.3% to 6.5% today. In the past three years, wages have risen 5.6%
in real terms for all workers. "Those in the bottom 25 % of the income
distribution, though, have seen wage gains of 7.5% in the same period while
those at the very bottom, the lowest 10 percent, have seen their income
jump 9.1%."
Critics of the Census Bureau data point out that median income is only up 0.4% for this decade, which matches the 80s, but is less than any of the three decades before that. The problem with this criticism is that, as noted above, the numbers focus only on monetary income, not total compensation, and ignore declines in the real cost of living. The critics want to make it seem like people are not getting ahead as fast as they used to, but if one looks at consumption data, as noted on the economic myths page, we are doing much better than median income numbers make it seem.