The U.S. Census Bureau says the median income in North Carolina dropped 5 percent in 2008, but so did poverty and the number of citizens who are health-insurance challenged.
The numbers, however, have Adam Searing, director of the Health Access Coalition at the N.C. Justice Center, crying foul. Maybe he's read Darrell Huff's How to Lie with Statistics?
Median household income in North Carolina dropped 5 percent in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but the states rate of people living in poverty and lacking health insurance also fell.North Carolinas median income for 2008 checked in at $42,930, down from $45,185 in 2007. The numbers are adjusted for inflation.
The number of North Carolinians without health insurance also declined, dropping to 1.4 million in 2008 from 1.5 million in 2007, according to the Census Bureau. The percentage fell a full percentage point last year to 15.4 percent from 16.4 percent in 2007.
Those numbers dont necessarily reflect the reality of health-care coverage, says Adam Searing, director of the Health Access Coalition at the N.C. Justice Center, a progressive advocacy group.
Searing points to the way information is collected for the report. According to the Census Bureau, the figures are based on a survey conducted in March. Questions on the survey asked about the respondents income and health-insurance status for 2008. Individuals who filled out the form were instructed to list themselves as uninsured only if they were without any health insurance private or government-provided for all of 2008.
I think that skews the numbers, Searing says. He notes that people who had health coverage at the start of 2008 but lost it during the year were instructed to list themselves as insured.
These numbers do not reflect the effect of the recession, Searing says. What were seeing is a delay in the reporting.