The U.S. Census Bureau today released a batch of new data on poverty, income and health insurance coverage from the Current Population Survey (CPS). On the national level, the CPS numbers show a big drop in median household income and an increase in poverty. The CPS data is available for your perusal on the Census Bureau website. This coverage from Reuters gives the national poverty news in broad strokes, and this AP story offers similarly big picture coverage of the health insurance trend identified in the data.

As for Wisconsin implications, here are a few highlights in the form of a comparison of the Census data from 2000-01 with the averages for 2007-08:

• The poverty rate grew from 8.6% in 2000-01 to 10.4% in 2007-08.
• Median family income (adjusted for inflation) fell by $3,537 – from $55,761 to $52,224.
• The number of people with employer-sponsored insurance fell by about 213,000.

In our press release about the Census Bureau data, we opted to focus primarily on health insurance trends, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, this is the only source there is for state-by-state health coverage trends over many years. Also, there is another set of Census Bureau data–from the American Community Survey (ACS)–scheduled to come out on Sept. 22, less than two weeks away. The ACS is a better source for poverty data because the sample size is larger, allowing us to look at the data on a more local scale and break it down by race and other demographic factors. The CPS, in contrast, generally uses 2-year averages for state-level analysis because the smallness of the sample size sometimes leads to quirky jumps.

The main story from our perspective is that Wisconsinites are losing employer-based insurance at a troubling pace, so we must continue to invest in our excellent system of health care safety net programs like BadgerCare Plus, along with working toward a comprehensive federal health care reform package, as we seek to finish the job of insuring every child and family in Wisconsin.