Family Income Down, Poverty Up

Call it the Bush Effect. The distribution of incomes heads south.

The big news was that real median household income actually fell 0.1 percent -- from $43,381 to $43,318 -- during the fairly robust recovery in 2003. And ever since the beginning of George W. Bush's presidency in 2000, median household income has dropped a whopping 3.5 percent.

Meanwhile, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. The poorest 20 percent of U.S. households saw their average income decline 1.9 percent between 2002 and 2003. The wealthiest 20 percent, for their part, enjoyed a 1.1 percent increase in average income over the same time.