More Americans continued to take on roommates or boarders than before the recession, women had fewer children, and people were still flocking to college or graduate school as a way to postpone their entry into the job market.
Those are just some measures of a tepid U.S. economy recorded last year in new Census Bureau reports that offer a portrait of a nation struggling to fully rebound from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. The data show a geographically uneven recovery in which the middle class is slipping and, on the basis of median household income, no better off than it was in 1989.
Unless there’s significant progress in the next few years, that reversal could be a watershed in American history.
“There is a remarkable disconnect between overall macroeconomic growth and the prosperity of middle- and low- income Americans,” said Jared Bernstein, a onetime chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden who’s now a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. “We’re not just talking about a fringe group being left behind. We are talking about the broad middle class.”
Amid the still shaky economy, demographers say they see a few positive trends -- including an uptick in people moving -- even if they appear to reflect a bottoming-out of measures collected last year, three years into the recovery.
“None of the indicators are close to where they were before the recession, but they are heading in the right direction,” said William Frey, senior demographer at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
Stagnant Income
In a report earlier this week, the Census Bureau said the proportion of Americans living in poverty in 2012 -- 15 percent -- remained close to a two-decade high and median household income was stagnant. That data, like the latest released today on how Americans are coping, shows the economic expansion hasn’t filtered down to most people. Rising stock prices and home values have helped the more affluent, while those on the lower and middle tiers contend with high unemployment and sluggish wages.
For the middle class, that report showed the median household income of $51,017 last year was slightly less than what was recorded in 1989, when adjusted for inflation. That means an average family 24 years ago was making more than those in 2012.
Affluent Gain