Census report shows blacks at bottom
Of the St. Louis American
Congressman Wm. Lacy Clay chairs the House Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives, which regulates the federal government’s information and privacy standards and oversees the Census Bureau.
That bureau’s newest data holds alarming news for many Missourians and African Americans throughout the nation.
In Missouri, Census data confirmed that the number of residents without any health insurance increased by more than 103,000, which reflects the impact of 2005 statewide Medicaid cuts imposed by Republican Governor Matt Blunt.
The Census Bureau data, collected in March 2007, reflects health insurance coverage for Missourians in 2006. Census figures show about 40,000 people lost employment-based insurance coverage and more than 60,000 others lost Medicaid coverage.
“This shows that the people who lost Medicaid coverage most likely became uninsured, which is pretty devastating news,” says Timothy McBride, director of health policy at Saint Louis University School of Public Health.
He said the Census figures confirm that “there was no safety net.”
Nationally, according to the Census report, blacks experienced an 8.5 percent increase in the number of people who have no health care (from 7 million to 7.6 million).
The number of uninsured Hispanics increased from 14 million (32.3 percent) to 15.3 million (34.1 percent); and the number of uninsured whites remained unchanged over the past two years, at 10.8 percent (21.2 million.).
The Census Report released on August 28 showed that the poverty rate decreased by 1.2 percent for Hispanic-Americans (21.8 to 20.6).
But poverty rates remained statically unchanged for whites, 8.2 percent, and blacks at 24.3 percent.
Poverty rates for blacks in 2006 were 3.7 percent higher than Hispanic-Americans and 16.1 percent higher than whites.
The annual report, based on compilations of 2006 data is called “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006.”
Economists say it’s America as usual.
“The data are just not surprising,” says economist Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C.
“You don’t even have to see the data to know that African-American people are at the bottom. All you have to do is walk a neighborhood to see the number of unemployed.”
Other findings include:
• The number of uninsured children increased from 8 million (10.9 percent) in 2005 to 8.7 million (11.7 percent) in 2006.
• About 9.8 percent (7.7 million) of the nation’s families were in poverty in 2006. Married-couple families had a poverty rate of 4.9 percent (2.9 million), compared to 28.3 percent (4.1 million) for female-householder (no-husband-present families), and 13.2 percent (671,000) for those with a male householder with no wife present. Those poverty rates remained steady between 2005 and 2006.
• The number of people without health insurance coverage overall rose from 44.8 million (15.3 percent) in 2005 to 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006.
Bill Spriggs, chairman of the Howard University Economics Department, says while Clay and the Congressional Black Caucus are working hard to increase incomes and health care for black people, “many black people don’t live in CBC districts.”
“So, we must ask (these black voters), ‘What am I doing to make my representative more responsible? Are they towing the line with the president?’” Spriggs said.
Malveaux said though African Americans may not be surprised by the Census numbers, they should be inspired to mobilize.
“The Census data confirms what many African Americans have been feeling, which is that we have been at the bottom economically, that economic injustice remains, that there’s too much poverty in our community and too much unemployment and public policy has failed to address these issues,” Malveaux said.
“African-American people need to organize, organize, organize.”
Hazel Trice Edney contributed reporting to this article.