September 14, 2017
Poverty decreases, income increases in Seattle area and Washington state
Census data released Sept. 14 show that poverty declined between 2015 and 2016 in Washington state and in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area, specifically.
The share of Washingtonians living in poverty dropped from 12.2 percent to 11.3 percent between 2015 and 2016, according to new Census data released Thursday. This is the third straight year that poverty has decreased since the post-recession high of 14.1 percent in 2013.
Washington was one of 24 states with statistically significant declines in their poverty rates during that period. Poverty increased in Vermont and remained statistically unchanged in the other states and in the District of Columbia.
Poverty edged down in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area as well, dropping from 10.2 percent to 9.6 percent between 2015 and 2016. The poverty rate for children remains higher than the general rate. Statewide, 13.7 percent of Washington children live in households under the poverty threshold, which is $24,339 for a family of four. In the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area, the child poverty rate is 11.9 percent.
“It is good news that the poverty rate has dropped for a third year in a row in Washington state. However, we should keep in mind that one in nine children in the Seattle metro area still lives in poverty, despite our region’s growing wealth,” said Jennifer Romich, director of the West Coast Poverty Center at the University of Washington and an associate professor of social work.
Washington was one of 30 states that saw statistically significant increases in income: State median household income rose 4.6 percent to $67,106. Median household income in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area also rose 4.4 percent to $78,612. Seattle remains the major metropolitan area with the fourth highest income, after San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Boston.
In the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area, an estimated 13,700 more households had income over $200,000 in 2016 than in 2015. These highest-income households comprise 14.1 percent of all households in the area.
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For more information, contact Romich at romich@uw.edu.
Tag(s): Jennifer Romich • School of Social Work • West Coast Poverty Center
