Spendlove said Utah's median household income tends to rank relatively high, despite the state's low per capita income because of a high dependent population.

"The likely scenario is the husband works full time at a traditional job, and the wife works part time. . . . The dual income raises the state's median household income," Spendlove said.

Heather Tritten, director of community and government relations for Utah Issues, said Utah's flat poverty data is "neither good news nor bad news.

"We're not in the recovery mode," she said. "Jobs aren't paying enough for people to move out of poverty."

Other national trends showed:

• The poverty rate increased to 8.6 percent for non-Hispanic whites in 2004, up from 8.2 percent in 2003. The rate declined from 11.8 percent to 9.8 percent for Asians and remained unchanged at 21.9 percent for Hispanics and 24.7 percent for blacks.

• The Midwest was the only region to show an increase in poverty rate — 11.6 percent in 2004, up from 10.7 percent in 2003. The South continued to have the highest poverty rate at 14.1 percent. The West's poverty rate was 12.6 percent, and the Northeast's was 11.6 percent.

• The percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance inched down from 60.4 percent in 2003 to 59.8 percent in 2004. Meanwhile, the number of those covered by government health insurance rose from 26.6 percent to 27.2 percent, driven largely by increases in the percentage of people on Medicaid.

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com