Average U.S. Household Income Records Drastic Increase in 2015

U.S. household income posted a record increase in 2015 after years of stagnation, implying that the economic recovery from the Great Recession of 2008 was finally lifting ordinary citizens who had mostly not felt the progress of America in the last couple of years according to Reuters.

Although the US economy gradually exited recession seven years ago and stock prices have seen an unprecedented bull market, millions of ordinary Americans apparently have not felt the positive change. However, the Census Bureau data believes that the tide was turning.

The Census Bureau released a statement last Tuesday saying that the median household income surged 5.2 percent last year to $56,500, the highest rise since 2007, in large part because of solid employment gains. The jump was the biggest since record keeping began in 1968 Reuters said.

Assistant division chief at the Census Bureau, Trudi Renwick, said on a conference call with reporters that it was remarkable that median household income rose across the board in the entire nation. "It's up for almost every age group of household heads. It's up for nearly almost every racial group." she said.

Concerns about income growth and wage increase have been a point of contention in the U.S. presidential race, with many Americans expressing deep seated dissatisfaction with an economy that has barely moved forward since the 2007-2009 recession.

US President Barack Obama hailed the report as solid proof that his administration's economic policies and decisions were paying off, but he acknowledged that more was 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.

Reuters said that 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.

"The three key indicators of well-being ... all moved decisively in the right direction in 2015 - the first time that has occurred in nearly two decades," said Robert Greenstein, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

An alternative measure of poverty that takes into account non-cash benefits, including food stamps and refundable tax credits, fell one-tenth of a percentage point to 14.3 percent.