The slow recovery from the Great Recession continued to have an impact on Idaho households in 2011, dropping median household income for the third straight year.
New U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Thursday put median household income in Idaho at $43,341, down 0.3 percent from 2010. Since the recession took a firm grip on Idaho’s economy in 2008, median household income has dropped 8.9 percent.
Only eight other states have posted three straight year of declining median household income, the income level at which half the households bring in more and the other half less. But only Nevada and Georgia recorded larger three-year declines.
Florida has seen median household income decline for four straight years. The other states with three-year declines were Arizona, California, Hawaii, New Jersey and New Mexico.
The share of Idahoans living in poverty last year rose to 16.5 percent from 15.7 percent in 2010, and the households receiving food stamps rose from 72,000, or 12.5 percent of all households, to over 78,000, or 13.5 percent, in 2011. While Hispanic households receiving food stamps fell from 31.9 percent to 30.7 percent, the number of white households receiving food stamps rose from 10.2 percent to 11.9 percent in 2011.
At the same time 83.5 percent of the population had some kind of health coverage, up from 82.3 percent in 2010 primarily due to additional people qualifying for government health care. Those with private insurance dropped from 67.4 percent in 2010 to 66.9 percent in 2011 while those enrolled in public health care programs rose from 26.9 percent in 2010 to 28.5 percent in 2011.
Additional demographic, social and economic statistics on Idaho and the other states based on 2011 estimates are at http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t on the American Community Survey site of the U.S. Census Bureau.
