Poverty rate increases in New York City

A growing job market and strengthening economy don't seem to have helped low-income New Yorkers, as more of them sank into poverty last year.

New York City's poverty rate rose to 20.3 percent in 2004, up from 19 percent in 2003, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics released yesterday. Across the city, the rate ranged widely, from 9.6 percent in Staten Island to 30.6 percent in the Bronx.

That's compared with a national rate of 12.7 percent, a slight increase from the 12.5 percent rate in 2003.

"We can't assume that just because we have something that looks like a recovery, that people are better off," said Mark Levitan, senior policy analyst with the Community Service Society of New York, a Manhattan nonprofit poverty organization. "They're not better off, and they need help."

New York City had a particularly tough time, according to the local data, which come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. Of cities with more than 1 million people, New York City was the only one to experience a statistically significant increase in its poverty rate. And the Bronx and Brooklyn were two of the 10 counties with the highest poverty rates in the country, the Census Bureau said.

The poverty threshold for a family of four in 2004 was an income of $19,307. The threshold is the same for all regions, regardless of variations in the cost of living.

Census Bureau officials and other experts suggested that improvement in the poverty rate often lags behind the rest of the economy.

But there may be more going on, said economist Jared Bernstein, with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

"I think the fingerprints of a faltering job market are all over this report," Bernstein said. "We've got more people working, but they're failing to get ahead."

In parts of New York City, immigrants and single-parent families may have even more trouble staying afloat, according to Rae Rosen, senior regional economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The problem may be even more serious than the data suggest, she noted, since the statistics don't adjust for cost of living increases.

"The people who are most vulnerable found it more difficult," Rosen said.

Above the poverty line, however, city residents fared a bit better, though their wages are not growing. Real median household incomes stayed virtually the same, as they did nationwide. The city's median household income, adjusted for inflation, stood at $41,509 in 2004, the Bureau said.

"What this data shows is that New York has the greatest gaps between wealth and poverty in the country," said Frank Mauro, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute in Albany.

In a separate report, the Census Bureau said the percentage of the U.S. population without health insurance remained the same, at 15.7 percent, in 2004. In New York State, the percentage of uninsured stood at 14.2, down from 2003's 15.1 percent.

The percentage of people with employment-based coverage fell to 59.8 percent in 2004, from 60.4 percent in 2003. Government programs picked up the slack. "It shows that Medicaid and CHIP [Children's Health Insurance Program] are the only programs standing between millions more people being uninsured," said Barbara Lyons, vice president for the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington, D.C.