by Rose O’Malley, Program Assistant
National Women’s Law Center
Today, the Census Bureau released its annual statistical report, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007. Unsurprisingly, the news for women does not make me jump for joy.
There was no reduction in women’s poverty. And, women are still far more likely to live in poverty than men are: 12.5 percent of women are poor, compared to 8.8 percent of men. While the wage gap decreased slightly, with women now making 78 cents to the dollar, instead of 77 cents, women are still earning less than they deserve. Hmm…if only there were some law to help remedy that situation…
The good news is that number of uninsured women went down slightly in 2007 compared to 2006 (for a change) but more than 17 million women – millions more than in 2000 – were still without health care coverage. The improvement was thanks to an expansion of public health insurance last year – the number of women with private health insurance declined yet again.
The really worrying thing, though, is that these numbers are for 2007, the year before the economic downturn. If six years of economic progress left millions of women uninsured, disproportionately poor, and making less than they deserve, what will a recession bring? It’s no wonder women are overwhelmingly concerned about the economy.
For more on the new numbers, check out NWLC's press statement.
I just wrote a post about my personal experiences with (relative) poverty over at the CA NOW blog: http://www.canow.org/canoworg/2008/08/poverty-persona.html
Posted by: tiggrrl | August 28, 2008 at 01:57 PM