http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/15396681.htm

Posted on Wed, Aug. 30, 2006
By NEIL STRASSMAN and MARIA PEROTIN
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITERs

Arlington's poverty rate has nearly doubled in the past five years, even as the national poverty rate levels, census figures released Tuesday show.

"Shame on us if that's true," Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck said. "We need to work harder to make sure people have good jobs in our community."

Still, the percentage of residents living in poverty in Arlington is lower than in Fort Worth or Dallas, cities that had slight increases in poverty in the past two years, according to census figures.

From 2000 to 2003, the percentage of people in Arlington who had lived below the poverty level in the previous 12 months rose from 7.2 percent to 11.3 percent. In 2005, the figure reached 13.3 percent. Fort Worth was at 18.8 percent in 2005, and Dallas reached 22.1 percent.

Nationally, the 12.6 percent poverty rate was statistically unchanged from 2004, census officials in Washington said Tuesday when they released 2005 figures on income, poverty and health insurance coverage.

That means about 37 million Americans live in poverty. The federal poverty level for a family of four is $19,971 a year, officials said.

Census officials said there can be a margin of error of up to a few percentage points for larger cities. Changes in the number of people sampled and in the design of the survey can produce variations in the results, they said.

Texas has a poverty rate of 17.6 percent, up from 15.5 percent in 2000, census figures show.

Texas ranks fifth among states for people living in poverty and fifth for child poverty. Cameron and Hidalgo counties in far South Texas are among the poorest counties in the country, officials said.

"We ended welfare as we know it. We just didn't do anything about poverty." said Eva deLuna Castro, a policy analyst with the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin. "The vast majority of people have no idea about the millions of people living in poverty."

At Mission Arlington, the largest Arlington charity, two dozen people waited Tuesday afternoon for help.

Tillie Burgin, director of Mission Arlington, said the charity serves about 250 families a day and has seen a steady increase in needy people in the past five years.

"Our deal is to get folks OK as quickly as we can and hope they stay OK," she said.

Median income

The census figures released Tuesday also marked the first time since 1999 that real income rose.

Nationally, the median household income increased 1.1 percent from the previous year, to $46,326.

The median household income in Tarrant County was $49,104 last year, outpacing Texas' median income of $42,139.

That was an increase from the county's median income of $47,369 in 2004, but the difference is imprecise because the amounts weren't adjusted to account for inflation.

"In general, quality of life has gone up, but there is more of a disconnect between economic growth and the fortunes of people at the lower end of the distribution," said Paul Jargowsky, an associate professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. "As a country, we're much richer, but at the low end the progress has not been so great; it doesn't seem to be translating."

Health insurance

More Americans went without health insurance in 2005, largely because the share of people getting coverage from their employers declined.

Texas once again fared worst in the nation, with 24.6 percent of residents lacking coverage. That rate was effectively unchanged from the previous year.

Information on health insurance at the county level was not available.

Nationwide, 46.6 million people had no health benefits, reflecting an uninsured rate that climbed to 15.9 percent from 15.6 percent the previous year.

The percentage of people covered by government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, held steady. However, 59.5 percent of people got health insurance from employers, down from 59.8 percent in 2004.

Dr. Robert Rowland, chief of staff at Harris Methodist H.E.B. hospital in Bedford, said uninsured patients too often become sick after putting off routine medical care and skipping prescriptions that are beyond their financial means.

"These are folks that typically have jobs," Rowland said. "Everybody thinks that the uninsured are folks that are homeless and don't have jobs and live under a bridge somewhere, and they're not."

The lack of healthcare can take an especially heavy toll on families with children, said Barbara Best, executive director of the Children's Defense Fund of Texas.

There were 8.3 million children nationwide without health insurance last year, up from 7.9 million in 2004. And among the children living in poverty, 19 percent had no insurance in 2005.

The decline in employer coverage makes government programs such as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program essential for low-income families, Best said. But CHIP participation has fallen by about 211,000 children in the past three years, since Texas lawmakers sliced the program's budget and revamped some of the criteria.

"We're moving backward," she said. "Yet we continue to cut back on the programs that have made such a difference."

"We ended welfare as we know it. We just didn't do anything about poverty."

ON THE RISE

Percentage of people in Arlington who had lived below the poverty level in the previous 12 months.

2005 13.3%

2003 11.3%

2000 7.2%

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau
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Neil Strassman, 817-548-5520 strass@star-telegram.com Maria M. Perotin, 817-390-7339 mperotin@star-telegram.com