There is good news on the poverty front in the state of Utah according to a census report released earlier this week. Barbara Munoz is a policy analyst with the Community Action Partnership of Utah, an organization that studies and then works to deal with the state’s struggling families.

On KVNU’s For the People program Thursday, Munoz said the new report showed the poverty rate in Utah has actually dropped from 12.7 percent to 11.7 percent over the last year. That means thousands of people are no longer in poverty.

Munoz says every state, including Utah, found that more people now have insurance due to the Health Insurance Exchange. Munoz said there are, however, still income disparities.

“The wage gap is growing a bit between those who have quite a bit and those who are struggling in the lower income bracket,” Munoz explained. “So we have some wage disparity that we need to look at here in Utah.

“Certainly there have been advocacy groups and lawmakers who have pushed to raise the minimum wage or at least raise the minimum wage for people like restaurant workers. Servers, for instance, are still making $2.13 per hour minimum wage which has remained unchanged since the early ’90s.”

She said hopefully agencies working with the poor will use the information contained in the report in setting policies.