Denver residents experienced rising incomes, less poverty and better health-insurance coverage in 2014, while the nation still struggled to climb back from the 2008 recession, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report.
The median household income in the Denver-metro area grew $3,000 or nearly 5 percent last year, after adjustment for inflation. Its poverty level dropped by one-tenth, and nine of 10 resdents now have health insurance.
By comparison, the nation as a whole showed gains only in health coverage. “There was no statistically significant change from 2013 in either real median household income or the official poverty rate,” the bureau reported Thursday.
The positive economic numbers may help explain why Colorado performed well in another survey category: the movement of people from state to state, according to the bureau’s annual American Community Survey report.
Colorado gained 45,396 people more than it lost in one year, ranking behind only four states – Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Arizona – in net migration gains.
Still, the report suggests many people are still recovering from the national economic collapse of 2008.
Real median household income “is 6.5 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the nation entered the most recent economic recession,” the report said.
Denver’s income growth stands in contrast to the rest of the West, according to the report, a region that suffered a 4.6 decline in real median income from 2013 to 2014.
The survey also measures what has become a fast-changing social trend in Colorado and nationwide: same-sex couples.
In Colorado, the 2014 survey estimates there are now 15,402 same-sex households, a one-third increase in two years. It also found the number who identify themselves as married grew dramatically, from 16 percent to 36 percent since 2012.
That trend is likely to continue in the aftermath of this year’s victory for gay couples before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Nationally, the numbers of same-sex households grew 22 percent in two years to 783,000, according to the survey.
The Census survey differs from a recent Colorado report on health-care coverage.
Last week, a Colorado Health Access Survey reported that the uninsured rate in the state plummeted by more than half, from 14.3 percent to 6.7 percent in one year.
The Census survey showed a more modest decline, from 14.1 percent to 10.3 percent in Colorado. Nationally, it reported a drop from 14.5 percent to 11.7 percent in the number of uninsured Americans.
Deborah Goeken, senior director of communications for the Colorado Health Institute, calls the state survey more accurate.
“The Census Bureau rate was gathered through a survey taken between January and December 2014,” she said, whereas the state survey “was between March and June of this year, so it captured the second open enrollment” under the Affordable Care Act.”
