|
posted on: 8/30/2006
revised: 3/9/2010
Three statistical
topics from the latest U.S.
Census report for the year 2005 caught my attention:
INCOME
One in five households have income below
$19,000.
The top 1/5 of households have income
above $92,000. 76% of the these households have two or more
incomes. I realized that almost all of my friends, family, neighbors and
clients fall into this 2 income or single high income category. It shows
how little diversity I really experience.
POPULATION GROWTH
The growth in population shown since the
1970s is highly correlated with the growth in household income. Apparently
scientists know this to be a natural rule of species population without looking at census data, but I
still found it surprising.
HEALTH INSURANCE
About one in three Hispanics are
uninsured. This is significantly higher than any other group
reported. The cause appears to be only partly related to income
and legality of residence. What are the other reasons?
About 16% of the population overall has
no health insurance. This is old news.
About 11% of children have no health
insurance even though it is available free of charge to most
children without regard to citizenship status. The problem is
something other than cost and availability (at least as we see these
issues).
This tells me that if we consider the
level of uninsured to be unacceptable (I do not consider these to be
a huge problem, but other people
do) then making health insurance more affordable is not the main
issue that
should engulf all our attention. Apparently this would reduce the level
of uninsured by only about five percentage points (judging by the
children's situation). Clearly there are other larger issues
here.
See the census report at
http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf
keywords: US household income
related topics:
Copyright 2010 by Tony Novak. Originally produced and published for the "AskTony" column syndication prior to 2007. Edited and independently republished by the author in March 2010. All rights reserved. |
