Yesterday, we looked at the Austin Metropolitan Statistical Area’s inching up on median household incomes.  Today, the Statesman drills down on Austin-only data and finds a more mixed bag.  Most of the changes seem to be in the margin of error and thus hard to promote as a definite trend.  But one stood out as indicating real movement:  for married-couple families with children younger than 5, the poverty rate rose most dramatically — to 12.3 percent in 2008 from 5.1 percent in 2007.  And remember, this is with poverty being defined as at $21,834 for a family of four with two children.  As you can imagine, even with public benefits, that is a very, very tight squeeze for a family of four.

If you want to read about the need for new ways of measuring poverty, try these out.