by Calculated Risk on 9/10/2009 11:39:00 AM

From the Census Bureau:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that real median household income in the United States fell 3.6 percent between 2007 and 2008, from$52,163 to $50,303. This breaks a string of three years of annual income increases and coincides with the recession that started in December 2007.

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2007. There were 39.8 million people in poverty in 2008, up from 37.3 million in 2007.

Meanwhile, the number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008, while the percentage remained unchanged at15.4 percent.
...
•Income inequality was statistically unchanged between 2007 and 2008, as measured by shares of aggregate household income by quintiles and the Gini index. The Gini index was 0.466 in 2008.

Here are some interesting stats on income: Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) Supplement

Note: for the house price to household income chart I graph every quarter, I assumed a "2% increase in household [nominal] median income for 2008 and flat for 2009". That was too optimistic.