County poverty rate up 40 percent as state holds steady

Despite a rebounding economy, the poverty rate in King County increased last year as wages failed to keep pace with living costs.

A report yesterday by the U.S. Census found that between 2003 and 2004, median household income grew 2.5 percent in Washington, to $49,302, while the poverty rate remained relatively steady.

But in King County, the numbers for 2003 and 2004 were more striking, with the Census Bureau reporting that the poverty rate grew more than 40 percent over the year, from 7.3 percent to 10.4 percent.

Some questioned the findings, saying too few people were surveyed at the county level for accurate conclusions to be drawn.

"For the numbers to jump around as much as it did raises questions of credibility," said Chandler Felt, King County demographer.

Felt was particularly concerned about the 2003 numbers, which showed a drop in poverty compared to previous years. Last year's poverty rate was more in line with poverty rates before 2003, he said, suggesting that the 2003 numbers may have been a blip.

Still, Felt said the overall picture is probably accurate. "It tells us that King County is still struggling with the recession," he said. "There's still substantial [numbers] ... below the poverty level. I don't know how many, but I know the numbers are big and troubling."

A family of four earning $19,307 or less is considered below the national poverty level.

For Jean Colman, co-director of the Welfare Rights Organizing Committee in Seattle, last year's higher poverty numbers reflect reality.

"Even with the economy as good as it has been, the jobs that are being created are not livable-wage jobs," she said. "They don't support a family, and families are just not making it."

Colman said many people are moving from welfare poor to working poor, and that even though the state has the highest minimum wage in the nation, the jobs aren't helping people get out of poverty.

She said she fears that when Congress reconvenes next week, lawmakers will make even further cuts to health-care and other anti-poverty programs.

"I'm incensed about that," she said. "I'm concerned Congress isn't going to pay attention to these numbers."

Jon Gould, deputy director of the Children's Alliance, said he, too, is seeing more poverty.

"This data confirms what we've known for a long time — that the child-poverty rate in the state is 17 percent and Washington is no better than average in addressing child poverty."

He said he was surprised at the King County numbers, which showed median household income dropped last year to $55,114 from $58,581 in 2003.

"It means there are not enough good-paying jobs to bring more people out of poverty in what we think of as a prosperous community," Gould said. "The gap we see in the country overall is mirrored in Seattle and King County. This data shows prosperity is not being shared even in an economic recovery."

Nationally, even with a robust economy that was adding jobs last year, the number of Americans who fell into poverty rose to 37 million — up 1.1 million from 2003 — according to the Census Bureau.

It marks the fourth straight increase in the government's annual poverty measure.

The bureau also said household income remained flat, and the number of people without health insurance edged up by about 800,000, to 45.8 million people.

"I was surprised," said Sheldon Danziger, co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. "I thought things would have turned around by now."

While disappointed, the Bush administration, which has not seen a decline in poverty numbers since the president took office, said it was not surprised by the new statistics.

Commerce Department spokeswoman E.R. Anderson said they mirror a trend in the 1980s and 1990s in which unemployment peaks were followed by peaks in poverty and then by a decline in the poverty numbers the next year.

Democrats seized on the numbers as proof that the nation is headed in the wrong direction.

"America should be showing true leadership on the great moral issues of our time — like poverty — instead of allowing these situations to get worse," said John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and Democratic vice presidential candidate. He has started a poverty center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Overall, the nation's poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year. Of the 37 million living below the poverty level, close to a third were children.

The last decline in overall poverty was in 2000, during the Clinton administration, when 31.1 million people lived under the threshold. Since then, the number of people in poverty has increased steadily from 32.9 million in 2001, when the economy slipped into recession, to 35.8 million in 2003.

The increase in poverty came despite strong economic growth, which helped create 2.2 million jobs last year, the best showing for the labor market since 1999. By contrast, there was only a tiny increase of 94,000 jobs in 2003 and job losses in 2002 and 2001.

The estimates on poverty, income and those without medical insurance are based on supplements to the bureau's Current Population Survey, and are conducted over three months, beginning in February, at about 100,000 households nationwide.

Data that look at individual counties are from a separate survey, the American Community Survey.