Income, poverty and a new interactive from Marketplace
We got a new read on the economy this week from the U.S. Census Bureau: the annual report on income and poverty in the U.S. According to the report, median household income was $51,017 in 2012, pretty much the same as 2011. And the poverty rate stayed just about the same as well, coming in at 15 percent of the population.
But no news is good news, right? Well, not really. Many economists were expecting the median income to go up a little and the poverty rate to go down, a reflection of our recovering economy. Income and poverty numbers that won’t budge could indicate that the recovery has not been felt equally across all incomes.
While the census numbers tell us something about the health of our economy, there are a lot of other measures of how we live according to our incomes. For example, how many people own homes at different income levels? And how does a person’s income compare to the median in their Zip code? Or to the national median? The Marketplace Wealth and Poverty Desk has built a new data interactive game called Income Upshot, which tracks the relationship between what we make and how we live, work and play. Click on the link below to see how you stack up.
Income Upshot:
How people at different incomes live, work and play. A new data interactive from Marketplace’s Wealth & Poverty Desk. Try the interactive.
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