Yesterday, we looked at the Austin Metropolitan Statistical Area’s inching up on median household incomes. Today, the Statesman drills down on Austin-only data and finds a more mixed bag. Most of the changes seem to be in the margin of error and thus hard to promote as a definite trend. But one stood out as indicating real movement: for married-couple families with children younger than 5, the poverty rate rose most dramatically — to 12.3 percent in 2008 from 5.1 percent in 2007. And remember, this is with poverty being defined as at $21,834 for a family of four with two children. As you can imagine, even with public benefits, that is a very, very tight squeeze for a family of four.
If you want to read about the need for new ways of measuring poverty, try these out.
