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Income up, poverty down: Texas exceeding U.S. in key economic numbers

Dallas News

Originally Posted: September 15, 2016

Texas rode the national wave of rising incomes and decreased poverty last year — a combination economists and demographers found surprising, given turbulence in the state’s energy industry.

“It’s a great report and it’s great for us,” said Pia Orrenius, a senior economist at the Dallas Federal Reserve. “You don’t see any impact from the oil bust.”

Experts said the Lone Star state didn’t merely keep pace with the rest of the country; it exceeded national averages in key economic measures included in new Census Bureau data released Thursday.

For the first time since 2009, the national median household income grew significantly, jumping 3.8 percent from $53,713 in 2014 to $55,775 in 2015. The phenomenon spanned racial categories and age groups.

Economists celebrated that boost as a sign that one of the most stubborn remnants of the recession — stagnant wages — is finally dissipating.

In Texas, though, the number was a full percentage point higher. Here, median household income jumped 4.8 percent, from $53,105 in 2014 to $55,653 last year.

Texas’ percentage of residents living in poverty also dropped faster than the nation’s overall, by 1.3 percentage points, compared with the national rate dropping 0.8 percentage points. READ MORE