While the median household income in the United States steadily increased from 2000 to 2010, it decreased in Detroit from 2000 to 2010. The median household income in the State of Michigan was higher than that of the United States in 2000, about the same in 2005, and lower in 2010. Wayne County’s median household income remained fairly steady during this time period.
Of the four geographic areas represented in this graph, the United States is the only one that showed a steady increase in the median family income from 2000 to 2010. While Michigan had a higher median family income in 2000 and 2005 compared to that of the United States, Michigan’s median family income was lower than that of the United States in 2010. In 2010, Detroit’s median family income was a little more than half of that of the United States.
In 2000 and 2005, the State of Michigan had a lower percentage of families whose income was below the poverty level than that of the United States, but, in 2010, the opposite was true . In 2010, Detroit had nearly three times the percentage of families whose income was below the poverty level than that of the United States. Regardless of geographic location, the percentage of families whose income was below the poverty level increased from 2000 to 2010.
In the United States, the percentage of families with children under 18 living in poverty increased by roughly two percentage points every five years from 2000 to 2010. The other three geographic areas had much larger increases in this category during the same period. In fact, in 2010, nearly half of families with children under 18 living in Detroit had an income below the poverty level.
In 2010, nearly half of families with children under 5 living in Detroit had an income below the poverty level, which was over a 10 percent increase from 2005. The percentage of families with children under 5 living in Detroit was roughly twice that of families living in Michigan and more than twice that of families living the United States. How much of this change is as a result of decline of family income and how much is from out-migration of higher income families from Detroit will have to await further analysis.