Last year, she pulled her daughter out of the federally backed Head Start preschool program because she couldn't afford the $10 daily fee.

"I lost my job," Montejano said. "I didn't even tell the teacher. I was so embarrassed."

Today, money remains tight for the family but things are a little brighter. She has a higher-paying job - one that pays her $9.70 an hour as a receptionist - and her husband installs vinyl fences.

More Utahns than in years past are locked into a similar struggle to leave poverty behind, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In the 1990s, Utah held one of the nation's lowest poverty rates, between 7 and 8 percent.

"We need to get it back to where it was five years ago," said Pamela Silberman, a poverty policy analyst for the advocacy group Utah Issues.

In two reports, the Census Bureau also released data on income, uninsured rates and surveys of large suburban areas that include information on Utah, Salt Lake, Davis and Weber counties.

Which way Utah's poverty rate is heading - up or down - depends on how the data are read.

Looking at the census data for a two-year average, poverty headed down in 2003. That average, using data collected in 2002 and 2003, says Utah's poverty rate is at 9.5 percent of the population, or 220,000 people. That's a drop from 10.2 percent during the two-year period ending in 2002.

Utah poverty is headed up, however, if census data from a three-year average - from 2001 to 2003 - are used. That method puts Utah's poverty rate at 9.8 percent, a decade high and up from 9.3 percent a year earlier.

In reality, the poverty rate probably remained flat.

Karen Crompton, director of the advocacy group Utah Children, points to margins of error in the surveys in contending the rate has been static.

"I look at it and say, 'It's unchanged,' '' Crompton said. "That part is the good news, despite the downturn in the economy and loss of jobs."

Silberman agrees. "Our conclusion is there's little to no change," she said.

Nationally, the number of people living in poverty grew by 1.3 million last year, to nearly 36 million people and a rate of 12.3 percent of the population.

The definition of poverty is determined by household size and income. For instance, for a family of four, the poverty level is $18,660.

For health care coverage, Utah's uninsured rate dropped to 13 percent, or 300,000 people, in 2003. A year earlier, 14.1 percent of Utahns were without insurance. Nationally, the number of uninsured increased a half percent to 15.4 and includes 45 million people - the most ever recorded.

Judi Hilman, the health project director for Utah Issues, argues that any gains made in health care coverage are negligible. The difference, she says, was the result of the creation of the 25,000-person Primary Care Network, a Utah Department of Health Program that offers partial coverage to adults.

"We don't count that as covered," Hilman said.

The Department of Health also takes issue with the Census figures, saying it overestimated the number of uninsured. In June, the department released its own survey that put the uninsured number at 9 percent for 2003.

Median income in Utah remained unchanged, though.

In 2003, the median Utah household earned $49,116, up $39, according to the Census Bureau. The national average was $43,349.

The survey reports that 47 percent of renters in Utah are using more than 30 percent of their income on housing. That figure is significant because advocates for the poor argue paying more than 30 percent of income for housing is unaffordable.

For Silberman, the figures reported by the bureau Thursday are an incomplete story of what's happening to low-income Utahns.

"The economic recovery Utah is supposedly seeing isn't reaching the lowest-income families," Silberman said. "If we only focus on the poverty rate, we're missing the real picture."

For the Montejano family, even living above the poverty level is a struggle.

"We're honestly living paycheck to paycheck," Montejano said. "After the bills are paid, there's probably $50."

Even before release of the data, some Democrats claimed the Bush administration was trying to play down bad news by releasing the reports a month earlier than usual. The reports normally come out separately in late September - one on poverty and income, the other on insurance.

Releasing the numbers at the same time and not so close to Election Day ''invites charges of spinning the data for political purposes,'' said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.

Census Director Louis Kincannon - a Bush appointee - denied politics played any role in moving up the release date. The move, announced earlier this year, was done to coordinate the numbers with the release of other data.

Even without the timing issue, the data have become part of the election year debate.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry seized on the numbers as evidence the Bush administration's economic policies have failed. During the years Bush has been in office, 5.2 million people have lost health insurance and 4.3 million have fallen into poverty, he said.

''Under George Bush's watch, America's families are falling further behind,'' Kerry said.

Bush administration officials were quick to counter that the data didn't reflect more recent gains in the economy in the first half of 2004 and left some of the blame on Congress. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Bush was focusing on proposals that would reduce the costs of health insurance for businesses.

''The big failure is not what is happening in the administration,'' Thompson said. ''Individuals in the Senate have failed to adopt the president's health care plan.''

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, noted that while more people lost insurance, the number of Americans who had coverage grew by 1 million last year. Overall, 243 million people had insurance in 2003.

''The bottom line is this: More people in America have health coverage today than at any time in our nation's history, and I think that's a fact worth noting," Barton said. "But we can always do more."

---

The Associated Press contributed to this story.