This morning, the Census Bureau released new statistics on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2011.  The headline of the report was that the official U.S. poverty rate was 15.0% in 2011, little changed from the previous year.

The report did not contain any specific information on individual states, but some of the underlying data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) are now available.  Those data tell us that here in Arkansas, the poverty rate was 18.7%.  That was the fifth highest rate in the nation (of all 50 states plus the District of Columbia).  Median Family Income in Arkansas was  approximately $51,000, amounting to 84.3% of the national median of $60,500.  Arkansas’ ranking on family income was 46th.*

These statistics are based on the Census Bureau’s measure of “money income,” which does not include income from many programs intended to alleviate poverty.  For example, money income does not include Supplemental Nutrition Assitance Program (food stamps), housing subsidies, low-income energy assitance, or the earned-income tax credit.  A new Supplemental Poverty Measure which incorporates these income sources—along with updating the methodolgy for calculating the poverty threshold—were introduced last year.  Statistics on these alternative calculations will not be available until November.

It should also be pointed out that income and poverty data for individual states are more accurately measured in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) and the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE), which will come out later this month and in November, respectively.
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*Median income figures are calculated using the standard method and may differ from published Census estimates that are calculated using linear interpolation.