The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps struggling families get through tough times. But it does more than that, SNAP also sets children up for future success, leading to better health and economic outcomes and ultimately putting children into a position where they are less likely to need assistance as adults. House Republicans are currently working on a plan that erodes this investment in children, though. If passed, more than a million recipients will lose SNAP benefits, with most of them living in households with children.
This fact sheet provides a snapshot of the current economic state of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in the United States. It includes measures of economic well-being, such as income and poverty rates, as well as data on educational attainment, unemployment, and health insurance rates. Together, these measures help paint a portrait of the AAPI community’s economic health while demonstrating that headlines often mask variation within the group.
The labor market has steadily improved since 2010, as the economy recovered from the Great Recession. Looking past the headline unemployment rate, though, shows that there is still room for employment to grow. In January 2007, 80.3 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 54 were employed, today that rate is 79.2 percent. Getting back to the higher rate would mean that 1.4 million more Americans would have jobs.
May 10 2018
GOP Tax Law Has Not Led to Real Wage Growth
Today’s latest inflation data shows American workers are not seeing real raises. The average hourly wage for production and nonsupervisory workers in April was only 0.1 percent higher than what it was a year ago, after adjusting for inflation. Wage growth for most workers is weak and now that inflation is starting to pick up, wages are barely keeping pace. And this comes on top of decades of stagnating wages for most workers. If wage growth is barely keeping up to inflation, American families will see little improvements in living standards.
Before Medicaid, many Americans couldn’t afford the care they needed. For more than 50 years, the Medicaid program has guaranteed access to comprehensive health insurance for millions of people, providing coverage to over 72 million beneficiaries today. In doing so, Medicaid has bolstered the U.S. economy and provided an important backstop to the country’s economic security.
May 08 2018
Trump to Push Gas Prices Higher?
Gas prices have increased almost 50 cents a gallon in the past 12 months, reaching their highest levels since 2015, and are poised to jump higher if President Trump pulls out of the nuclear agreement with Iran when it comes up for renewal this week.
May 08 2018
Gas Prices Climb Over Past 12 Months
After the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the percent of adults without health care insurance declined steadily. The individual marketplaces and expansion of Medicaid in many states opened up new avenues to insurance for families who could not get coverage through employers. The Trump administration and Congressional Republicans are working hard to reverse this progress, though, and the data show that they are succeeding in reducing access to health care. A new survey shows that the number of nonelderly adults without health insurance rose again in 2018, particularly in states that have not expanded Medicaid.