New federal report surprises: Philadelphia poverty down, income up

The findings, contained in a voluminous report from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday, showed that the city’s poverty rate declined from 25.7% in 2016 to 24.5% in 2018. The number of Philadelphia residents living in poverty dropped by 14,537 — from 391,653 to 377,116 — while the median household income (adjusted for inflation) increased from $43,372 to $46,116.

“It’s meaningful improvement, particularly the healthy gain in median income,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “It goes to the strength of the Philadelphia economy, which is about as strong as I’ve ever seen in terms of wage growth, unemployment, and number of jobs.”

“It gives us hope and confidence that we are making progress,” said Maari Porter, deputy chief of staff policy and strategic initiatives in the mayor’s office. “But there’s no denying one-quarter of Philadelphians in poverty are still too many.”

Further, its childhood poverty rate was 34.6%, compared with around 20% nationwide. And while its deep poverty rate — a measure of people living at 50% of the poverty line or below — dipped somewhat in 2018, it came in at 11.1%, the highest among cities with a population of one million or more. The poverty line for a family of three in 2018 was $20,780.

In a puzzling finding, median household income in Gloucester County dropped by more than $7,600 between 2017 and 2018, from $89,496 to $81,849, the biggest decline in the region. At the same time, poverty showed a 1.6 percentage point rise. County officials were at a loss to explain why.

Meanwhile, Camden County confounded observers by registering increases in both income and poverty. Income popped up 2% from $66,196 to $67,523. At the same time, however, poverty rates somehow climbed from 11.5% to 13.3%, the 1.8 percentage point jump the largest in any county in the region.

“The middle class here saw a rise in income, and state incentives relocated lots of businesses to the city of Camden,” Parker said. But the office jobs could not help those in poverty, who lack the computer skills to work in such places, she added.

Marissa Christie, president and CEO of United Way Bucks County, was at a loss to explain. “I’m having a hard time reconciling an increase in income while our unemployment rate increased from 3.4% to 4% between June and July,” she said. “There’s a very high cost of living here. And at any moment, people’s families can be derailed.”