American incomes remained essentially flat in 2018 after three straight years of growth, according to Census Bureau figures released Tuesday that offer a broad look at U.S. households’ financial well-being, the Wall Street Journal reported. Median household income was $63,179 in 2018, an uptick of 0.9 percent that census officials said isn’t statistically significant from the prior year based on figures adjusted for inflation. The poverty rate in 2018 was 11.8 percent, a decrease of a half percentage point from 2017, marking the fourth consecutive annual decline in the national poverty rate. It was the first time the official poverty rate fell significantly below its level at the start of the recession in 2007. The share of Americans who lack health insurance rose for the first time since 2009, according to the figures. In 2018, 8.5 percent of people, or 27.5 million, didn’t have health insurance at any point during the year, compared with 7.9 percent of people, or 25.6 million, the previous year. That reversal comes years after the 2010 Affordable Care Act expanded insurance coverage to millions of Americans.
