Michigan income, poverty levels hold despite pandemic

Michiganders are making just as much money but more have health insurance now than before the pandemic, according to census data released Thursday.

"Despite the enormous effects of the pandemic in so many ways, it did not kick the income and poverty numbers in a big way," said Charles Ballard, an economics professor at Michigan State University. "It's a remarkable story in itself, that you have this social and demographic and health earthquake and yet if you squint, you can't see that it did anything to the income and poverty numbers."

In Michigan, the median household income was $63,498 in 2021, according to American Community Survey data. The U.S. median household income was also not statistically different last year compared with 2019, at $69,717.

Despite larger trends, the data released Thursday, for areas with 65,000 or more residents, shows some income gains and losses since 2019:

• Grand Rapids and Lansing saw median household income increase between 9% and 12%, respectively, to $59,596 and $48,818.

• Troy's income level declined by 17% to just under $100,000.

• Berrien and Ottawa counties' household income climbed roughly 8% to $57,535 and $79,116, respectively.

• Shiawassee was the only county that experienced a decline; the median household income there dropped by 11% to $51,959 last year.

Questions about income on the ACS are not intended to capture programs introduced or expanded amid the coronavirus pandemic, such as stimulus/Economic Impact Payments, expanded unemployment insurance and the advance Child Tax Credit payments, according to Kirby Posey, Census Bureau statistician.

Comparable annual estimates for 2020 are not available due to data collection issues during the pandemic. The results were released but are considered experimental, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Changing the college mindset

More people living in Michigan reported having a four-year college degree. In 2021, the percentage of Michigan residents with a bachelor's degree or greater increased by 1.7 percentage points to 31.7%, trailing the national rate which increased by 1.9 percentage points to 35%, according to ACS data.

Historically, Michigan, with its high-wage manufacturing jobs, has been an outlier when it comes to the relationship between education and income, said Lou Glazer, president of Michigan Future Inc., a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in Ann Arbor.

But for the last two decades, we now fit into the national pattern – where low college education means lower income levels, Glazer said. "We really were rich for quite a period of time where college attainment didn't matter. ... now it's the single most important thing."

Demographer Kurt Metzger agrees.

"Michigan was a top-income state with low education back when manufacturing was king," said Metzger, who is also the founder of Data Driven Detroit.

But once the workforce and the skills that were needed changed, Michigan began falling behind.

"When you look at the correlation, there's a strong relationship and your options are much greater if you get the education," Metzger said.

Detroit is one of four Michigan communities where the percentage of residents with a college degree or greater grew last year. The other three are Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Clinton Township.

John Roach, a spokesperson for the city, called the statistic good news in a statement to the Free Press.

"Higher levels of education contribute to poverty reduction and more homeownership," he said.

Home ownership grows in Detroit

In what Roach described as some of the best news to come out of the release, more Detroiters owned their own homes.

It has been a decade since that was true. In 2021, about 51.3% of Detroit's housing units were owner-occupied compared to 47.8% in 2019.

Detroit's total number of housing units dropped by 10% to roughly 323,000 in 2021. The city's challenge to the 2020 census results, which officials maintain "missed tens of thousands of houses," remains under review.

Michigan's uninsured rate drops

The percentage of Michiganders without health insurance is among the lowest in the country. Policy experts credit union contracts such as the UAW's and health care coverage provided under the Affordable Care Act.

Michigan's uninsured rate was 5% last year, down 0.8 percentage points from 2019 and not statistically different from the state's 2017 rate of 5.2%. The U.S. uninsured rate was 8.6% last year.

Nationwide, the decline in the uninsured rate began in 2014 after the implementation of several major provisions of the Affordable Care Act and the expansion of Medicaid.

Twenty-eight states saw their uninsured rate drop between 2019 and 2021. North Dakota was the only state that saw an increase in the percentage of residents without health insurance.

More:Child tax credit helped Michigan kids — and numbers prove it

More:Who owns rental housing in Detroit? New report offers glimpse

Disparities in poverty rates persist

Michigan's poverty rate (13.1%) went unchanged between 2019 and 2021. Despite the narrowing of the poverty gap by race and ethnicity, Black Michigan residents were more than twice as likely as whites to be poor last year. About one in four Black residents was living below the poverty line in 2021.

Detroit and Flint continue to have some of the highest poverty rates in the country at 30.2% and 27.3%, respectively. In Detroit, the childhood poverty rate was 43.1% — more than double Michigan's childhood poverty rate of 17.8%. The percentage of children living in poverty in Flint was 34.2%, according to the latest estimates.

The poverty threshold for a family of four was $27,740 last year.

"We want the state to work harder to reduce poverty," said Peter Ruark, senior policy analyst at the Michigan League for Public Policy. Bipartisan efforts to increase the state earned income tax credit and a change to how the state allocates federal dollars from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families fund are two areas where Michigan could start, he said.

U.S. poverty rates increased 0.5 percentage points to 12.8%.

Most states saw no changes in the percentage of people living in poverty between 2019 and 2021. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia saw increases in their overall poverty rate. Arizona was the only state where poverty rates declined.

Working from home hits record levels

The latest ACS release covers more than 40 subjects, including statistics on how people get to work. For example, 2021 was a record year for the number and percentage of people working from home — the highest since the survey began in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In Michigan and the U.S., the percentage of people working from home more than tripled to 16.4% and 17.9%, respectively, since 2019.

At the same time, public transportation commuting hit a record low for U.S. workers, dropping by about half to 2.5% in 2021. In Ann Arbor, the percentage of workers commuting by public transportation dropped from 9.6% in 2019 to 5.1% in 2021. In Detroit, it dropped 1.9 percentage points to 5.6%.

To see the latest data for your community, go to the U.S. Census Bureau website at https://data.census.gov.

Contact Kristi Tanner: ktanner@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @midatalove.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan household income flat, but more have health insurance: Census