REPORTS FIND FISCAL GAINS BY MINORITIES; RECOVERY TRICKLING DOWN, CLINTON SAYS.

Byline: Steven A. Holmes The New York Times

Brightening economic fortunes are increasingly extending to racial and ethnic minorities and reaching farther down the economic ladder as the nation's recovery moves briskly through its sixth year, several reports released Monday indicate.

The reports - income and poverty studies issued by the Census Bureau and a report on home ownership released by Harvard University - indicate that in the past three years, the economic prospects for nearly all households have risen and that the gains among minorities have in some cases reached unprecedented levels.

Latino households had a dramatic increase of 5.8 percent in median income - the largest of any group - which is a reversal of last year's decline of 5.1 percent. Monday's findings on Latinos have led Census Bureau economists to believe that last year's drop, the only sour note in a generally upbeat report, was a statistical anomaly.

(In California, the median income rose slightly and the percentage of people living in poverty and without health insurance coverage declined when comparing the average for the two-year period of 1994 and 1995 with the 1995-1996 period, according to state officials).

Seizing on the generally good news in Monday's reports of small increases in median income for American households, President Clinton took credit for the spreading prosperity and said it validated his economic policies. ``After years and years of stagnant family incomes, today's report proves that America's middle class, no longer forgotten, is rising fast,'' he told reporters.

Bolstering this view, the Census Bureau reported that for the second year in a row, median household income increased in 1996, rising 1.2 percent, to $35,492. This was only the second time since 1989 - just before the last recession - that the median income did not fall or remain stagnant. The increase appeared to be based almost solely on income gains in the South.

The Census Bureau's study also found the smallest earnings gap ever recorded between the sexes last year with the median income for full-time working women at 74 percent of that for men. But the shrinking gap reflects more a decline of men's wages than an improvement of women's incomes.

The Census Bureau reports also contained some gloomy news. While the growth in income for the richest 20 percent outpaced all other groups, the poorest 20 percent of the country's households had an income drop of 1.8 percent last year. And 500,000 more people, compared with the previous year, were living on incomes that were less than half the official poverty level in 1996.

The overall picture, however, showed improving fortunes for minorities almost across the board, evidence that economists say points to the benefits that a robust economy is extending to more groups of people.

In the past three years, virtually all groups - non-Latino whites, African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans - have seen their median incomes rise and their poverty rates drop. The Census Bureau reported that last year, 28.4 percent of African-American households were below the poverty line; that was the lowest proportion of African-Americans living in poverty since the Census Bureau began keeping tabs in 1955 and is undoubtedly the lowest African-American poverty rate in the country's history. A family of four making $16,036 in 1996 dollars is considered to be living at the poverty level.

Although the median income for African-Americans and Latinos continued to trail that of non-Latino whites last year, African-American men working full time narrowed a gap to earn 80 percent of the income of non-Latino white men, the smallest income gap between these two groups in 30 years.

(In California, the median income during the latest two-year period was $38,457, up 1.9 percent from the earlier two-year period, and higher than the national median income figure $35,287.

At the same time, the percentage of Californians living in poverty averaged 16.8 percent during the most recent two-year period, down 0.5 percent from the previous two-year period, while 20.4 percent of Californians lacked health insurance coverage, down 0.5 percent from the earlier two-year period.

California has a higher percentage of residents living in poverty than the national rate of 13.8 percent. The state also lagged behind the nation on health insurance coverage, with 15.6 percent of Americans lacking coverage last year.)

Median income is the exact midpoint in the income scale for any group. Half of the group's members earn less than the median and half earn more. The median is considered a more reliable measure than the mean, or average, income, which can be swayed by the gargantuan earnings of a relative few, giving a distorted view of a group's economic circumstances.

The Census Bureau's annual report was released the same day as a Harvard study showing that economic gains by minorities helped fuel the country's residential real estate boom from 1993 through 1996.

Demographers had predicted that the housing construction surge would slow in the 1990s as the baby-boom generation settled into more or less permanent housing. Instead, the number of homeowners grew by 3.4 million households in the period studied, with minority homeowners making up 29 percent of the increase.

``The good economy is seeping down,'' said William Apgar, executive director of Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. ``Fair lending practices are starting to happen. People - Realtors, lenders, home builders - are beginning to see that there is a minority market that can afford reasonably good housing.''