Declining health
AT FIRST glance, the latest report by the US Census Bureau on national income and health insurance shows little change in the United States between 2003 and 2004. Just under the surface, however, the figures reveal an erosion of earnings and health insurance benefits among people with jobs. Government policies ought to mitigate the impact of these declines and seek to reverse them. The Bush administration and Congress are making them worse.
The median household income was $44,389 last year, unchanged from 2003. But the number of people in poverty increased by 1.1 million. At the low rung of the income ladder, it was hard to find a job that paid enough to vault a family above the poverty line, which was $19,157 a year for a household with two adults and two children.
People who depend on wages for a living experienced a significant decline. For men, median earnings dropped by nearly a thousand dollars, to $40,798. For women, the decline was $327, to $31,223. Unearned income, from capital gains, dividends, and interest, made up the difference for some, usually in the upper-income levels. The economy is tilting against people who depend on wages or salaries.
Some wage earners also lost an important fringe benefit: health insurance. Only 59.8 percent were covered by employer-based insurance last year, compared with 60.4 in 2003 and 63.6 in 2000. In Massachusetts the loss of health coverage was among the most dramatic in the nation, though the overall rate of insurance remains relatively high. The recession early in the decade was especially severe here, and workers may never recover the level of coverage they gained in the 1990s boom without government help.
Across the nation, overall insurance coverage remained about the same last year because of Medicaid, government health programs for children, and Medicare for the elderly. Poverty among people 65 and over declined, to 9.8 percent, because their incomes were protected by Social Security. Government programs, when they are adequately funded, are effective in sustaining a reasonable standard of living in a turbulent economy.
The Bush administration and Congress, by cutting taxes disproportionately for wealthy people, are helping those who don't need it while imperiling programs that improve the lives of those less well off. President Bush is trying to weaken the guaranteed Social Security benefit to provide greater investment options for the affluent at the expense of seniors seeking a secure retirement.
The federal government has a responsibility to cushion the extremes of economic dislocations. The Census Bureau's report shows that it is failing in this essential task.
