Census: Hawaii household incomes and poverty both surge

More Hawaii residents lived in poverty in 2005, yet median household incomes also increased, according to new statistics released by the Census Bureau. Some 121,756 people in Hawaii lived at or below the poverty line in 2005, which was 9.9 percent of the state's residents. That was an 8.3 percent increase over 2004, when 112,437 residents were in poverty. For most  of the nation, the federal poverty threshold was $19,350 for a family of four in 2005, but in Hawaii it was $22,260.

At the same time, the 2005 median household income in Hawaii also rose by 9.3 percent, from $51,359 in 2004 to $56,133. The highest median household income in the country was in New Jersey at $61,694; Mississippi had the lowest at $33,090.

Meanwhile, Hawai‘i workers saw wages go up last year but they still fell below the national average, according to federal statistics released this week for the first quarter of 2007.  On Oahu, workers made 3.9 percent more in wages than they did in the same quarter in 2006, according to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The average weekly wage in the City and County of Honolulu was $771, which was $114 below the national average. The county ranked 169th in terms of wage growth and 176th in terms of wage level among the 328 largest counties nationwide.

New York County was No. 1 in the nation with an average weekly wage of $2,821. The lowest average weekly wage was $502 in Cameron County, Texas. Among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Hawai‘i’s average weekly wage of $748 in the first quarter of 2007 ranked 27th.

What’s more, Honolulu has one of the least affordable housing markets of major urban markets, according to a recent survey. Only three California markets – in Los Angeles, Salinas and San Francisco – are less affordable than Honolulu’s, which ranks fourth, according to the fourth annual Demographia International Housing Affordability survey.

227 markets in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the U.S. were ranked using data for the third quarter of 2007. The survey, compared the median house price to median household income multiple to determine housing affordability. Thunder Bay in Canada had the most affordable housing market, followed by Youngstown, Ohio, and Fort Wayne, Ind.