Washington, Sep 14 (IANS) US median household income saw the first annual increase in 2015 since the Great Recession, said the US Census Bureau on Tuesday in the middle of a heated US presidential race.
The median household income reached $56,516 in 2015 - 5.2 per cent higher than the level in 2014, the bureau was quoted as saying.
"This is the first annual increase in median household income since 2007, the year before the most recent recession," it said in a statement.
The data was 2.4 per cent lower than the peak level of the median household income of $57,909 in 1999, the bureau said.
"The data shows the remarkable progress that American families have made as the recovery continues to strengthen," said Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under the White House.
The bureau also said the US poverty rate in 2015 fell to 13.5 per cent, 1.2 percentage point lower from 2014 and the people in poverty reduced to 43.1 million, 3.5 million lower than 2014.
"It has been a long slog from the depths of the Great Recession, but things are finally starting to improve for many American households," Chris G. Christopher Jr., director of consumer economics at IHS Global Insight, was quoted as saying in The New York Times.
According to the report, the economic recovery, however, remains incomplete.
"The median household income was still 1.6 percent lower than in 2007, adjusting for inflation. It also remained 2.4 percent lower than the peak reached during the boom of the late 1990s. The number of people living in poverty also remained elevated, although it shrank last year by about 3.5 million, or roughly 8 percent," the NYT report added.
The share of Americans with health insurance continued to increase and only 9.1 per cent of the population had no health insurance last year, noted Census Bureau.
The news immediately attracted political comments.
"We lifted three and a half million people out of poverty, the largest one-year drop in poverty since 1968," President Barack Obama said during a rally in Philadelphia for Hillary Clinton.
"The uninsured rate is the lowest since they began keeping records. The pay gap between men and women shrank to the lowest level on record," Obama added.
The Census Bureau's annual report was based on a survey of 95,000 households.
The data, however, was a mixed bag for minority groups.
"Poverty rates fell most sharply for African-American and Hispanic households, but their income gains were smaller than for white households," the report added.
