New data from the U.S. Census Bureau finds that the U.S. poverty rate declined slightly between 2012 and 2013, however the numbers of people living at or below the poverty level in 2013 didn’t represent a real statistical change.

Yesterday, the Census Bureau released two annual reports: “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013” and “Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2013.” The agency found that between 2012 and 2013, the nation’s poverty rate declined from 15 percent to 14.5 percent. But the 45.3 million people living in poverty as of 2013 was not a “statistically significant change” from 2012. The 2013 poverty rate was still two points higher than it was in 2007, before the recession. It’s the third year in a row that the actual poverty numbers did not experience a statistically significant change.

Median household income didn’t change in a significant way either, increasing less than $200 from $51,759 in 2012 to $51,939 in 2013. In better news, the Census reported that the poverty rate for children younger than 18 years old declined from the previous year for the first time since 2000, falling from 21.8 percent, or 16.1 million, in 2012 to 19.9 percent, or 14.7 million, in 2013.

The income and poverty report also found that in 2013, real median household income was 8 percent lower than it was in 2007, just before the recession began. And while 2012–2013 changes in real median household income weren’t significant for most populations, it did increase by 3.5 percent among Hispanic households — and that’s the first annual increase in median income that Hispanic households have experienced since 2000. The 2013 male-to-female earning ratio (sometimes referred to as the gender wage gap) was about the same as the previous year at 0.78.

The Census found that income inequality between 2012 and 2013 didn’t change in a significant way; however, it did note that income inequality has increased between 1999 and 2013. The report stated that “incomes at the 50th and 10th percentiles declined by 8.7 percent and 14.3 percent, respectively, while there was no statistically significant decline in income at the 90th percentile between 1999 and 2013.”

In examining the job market, the Census found that the number of men and women working full-time and year-round increased by 1.8 million and 1 million, respectively, between 2012 and 2013, “suggesting a shift from part-year, part-time work status to full-time, year-round work status.”

The new poverty and income numbers attracted the attention of advocates, many of which called on policy-makers to address the issues facing working families. At the Center for American Progress, President Neera Tanden said:

The new Census data reveal that four years into the economic recovery, low- and middle-income families are still feeling the pain of unshared growth, stagnant incomes, and widespread economic insecurity. The economy is off kilter, with households at the top continuing to capture most of the gains from economic growth, while middle-class and struggling families are still waiting for the recovery to reach them.

Congress seems intent on making things worse. In 2013, Congress allowed across-the-board cuts to hit education, job training, and child care services, alongside reductions in nutrition assistance for families who can barely put food on the table. Today’s data should be a clarion call that Congress must change course to invest in job creation, raise the minimum wage, and enact measures to improve the economic security of struggling families.

In an article on MSNBC, writer Ned Resnikoff reported this quote:

“We’ve still got a large, ongoing crisis,” said Stephen Pimpare, a professor in Columbia University’s School of Social Work. “And it’s a crisis not just of economics and the Great Recession, which is the way a lot of people are going to talk about it. Because while it was true that poverty is greater than prior to the Great Recession, poverty is where it was in the early 1990s and early 1980s.”

And in a statement from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, President Robert Greenstein said:

In contrast with the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s — when the benefits of economic recoveries were more broadly shared and poverty and median income improved more quickly when recoveries started — the recoveries of the past two decades have been much slower to generate income gains for middle- and low-income Americans.  Part of the problem is the rising inequality of recent decades, which has meant that economic growth has not been widely shared.

Along with poverty and income data, the Census also released new health insurance numbers. The agency reports that in 2013, 42 million people, or 13.4 percent of Americans, didn’t have health insurance for the entire calendar year. That’s a big change from 2012, when the Census reported that 15.4 percent of Americans had no health insurance. Still, children living in poverty were less likely to have health insurance, as were black and Hispanics residents. Liz Borkowski offers additional insights into changing health insurance numbers in a post published yesterday.

Visit the Census Bureau to download the new reports and read highlights.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.