Women in Roanoke appear to be closing the wage gap when compared with men, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In the city, estimates suggest women earned 95 percent of what men earned in 2007, up from 87 percent in 2006.

That's well above the 2007 national female-to-male earnings ratio announced Tuesday of 78 percent, which is an all-time high.

The census surveys people across the country by phone, mail and in-person interviews.

But because the new data only include information for municipalities with populations of 65,000 and larger, not all regions within the Roanoke and New River valleys are available.

Additionally, the small sample size leads to a relatively high margin of error that means the year-over-year trends are statistically insignificant.

While women in Roanoke County did appear to close the gap, they didn't match the national ratio.

In the county, women earned 70.8 percent of what men earned in 2007, up from 64.6 percent a year earlier.

In Montgomery County, women passed the national average by earning 80 percent of what men earned in 2007, up from 67.6 percent in 2006.

Although the changes in most cases are small -- in fact, all are within the margins of error -- the census estimates offer a glimpse of the local economy as of last year.

Other highlights for Roanoke, Roanoke County and Montgomery County include:

• All three areas saw slight, but statistically insignificant, increases in estimated median household income.

In Montgomery County, it rose to $42,139 in 2007 from $38,496 in 2006. In Roanoke County, it grew to $59,679 in 2007 from $52,931 in 2006.

In the city, the growth was smaller at $37,270 last year compared with $35,532 in 2006.

• The poverty rate remained virtually unchanged, with an estimated 17.1 percent of people in Roanoke, 6.1 percent in Roanoke County and 21.6 percent in Montgomery County living below the federal poverty line.

Meanwhile, some national and state data do offer statistically valid insights into the economy, including:

• Median household income for the nation was $50,200 in 2007, an increase of 1.3 percent from 2006.

• Median earnings of both men and women who worked full time year-round rose between 2006 and 2007, after three consecutive years of decline.

• The number of people without health insurance coverage decreased to 45.7 million in 2007 from 47 million in 2006, and the uninsured rate for the nation decreased to 15.3 percent in 2007 from 15.8 percent in 2006.

"The number [of uninsured] fell, and a lot of the fall is due to the increase in coverage in public health insurance," said David Johnson, chief of the U.S. Census Bureau's Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division, referring to government health insurance programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

In Virginia, the number of people without health insurance remained statistically unchanged. The three-year average of uninsured Virginians was 13.6 percent, when looking at 2005 to 2007.

Data Delivery Editor Matt Chittum contributed to this report.