The official poverty rate in the United States in 2021 was 11.6 percent, accounting for 37.9 million people. The alternative poverty rate, known as Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), records the poverty rate at 7.8% in 2021.
In 2019, 6.3 million (of the 38 million poor) were considered working poor. The working poor are people who spent at least 27 weeks in the labor force (that is, working or looking for work) but whose incomes still fell below the official poverty level. This is typically 4-10 percent of the labor force.
The poverty threshold depends on the number of children and adults in a household.
In 2022, the federal poverty line for an individual under 65 years old was $15,225. This is equivalent to working full-time at $7.32/hr.
The poverty line for two adults and one child was $23,556 in 2022 - the equivalent of one adult working full-time at $11.32/hr
The poverty line for two adults and two children was $29,678 in 2022 - the equivalent of one adult working full-time at $14.27/hr
The same threshold is used across the United States and is intended for use as a statistical yardstick, not as a complete description of what people and families need to live. The official poverty line is calculated based on the consumer price index and is roughly three times the cost to cover a minimum food diet.
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/demo/poverty_measure-how.html
Although poverty rates have decreased over the past 50 years, poverty rates remain twice as high among Black and Hispanic populations:
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html
Poverty rates are disproportionately higher among most non-White populations. Compared to 8.1% of White Americans living in poverty, 24% of American Indian and Alaska Natives, 20% of Blacks, 17% of Hispanics, and 9.3% of Asians are living in poverty.
https://usafacts.org/topics/standard-of-living/
Black, Native American, and Hispanic children are most likely to be living in poverty, with one in three Black or Native American children living in poverty.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rads.asp
While 28% of Hispanic children are living in poverty, the percentage varies by nationality, with 38% of Guatemalan children and 36% of Honduran children living in poverty.
While 11% of Asian children are living in poverty, the percentage varies by nationality, with 37% of Bangladeshi children, 36% of Burmese children, and 28% of Hmong children living in poverty.
The impact of poverty on young children is significant and long-lasting. Poverty is associated with substandard housing, hunger, homelessness, inadequate childcare, unsafe neighborhoods, and under-resourced schools. In addition, low-income children are at greater risk than higher-income children for a range of cognitive, emotional, and health-related problems, including detrimental effects on executive functioning, below-average academic achievement, poor social-emotional functioning, developmental delays, behavioral problems, asthma, inadequate nutrition, low birth weight, and higher rates of pneumonia. (https://www.apa.org/topics/socioeconomic-status/poverty-hunger-homelessness-children)
By County: 341 of the nation’s 3,142 counties, about 10.9%, experienced high poverty rates for an extended period (a 20% poverty rate over the past three decades). In total, 19.4 million people lived in a persistent poverty county during the 30-year period, 6.1% of the population.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/persistent-poverty-areas-with-long-term-high-poverty.html
By Census Tract: About 11.3% or 8,238 of the more than 73,000 census tracts in the United States had poverty rates of 20% or more. More than 28 million people, or 9% of the U.S. population, lived in a persistent poverty census tract. Full report here. Example of census tract persistent poverty areas here:
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/persistent-poverty-areas-with-long-term-high-poverty.html
Interactive Maps Tracking Poverty by County
https://www.povertyusa.org/data/2019
Census Arc GIS
[https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=31e10881bd1040b7b0ae685559917509](https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/experiencebuilder/experience/?id=ad8ad0751e474f938fc98345462cdfbf)
https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=31e10881bd1040b7b0ae685559917509
Intergenerational Mobility is Higher by Location
“For example, a child born in the early 1980s who grew up in poverty in Boulder, Colorado, could expect to end up far higher in the income distribution (around the 47th percentile) than a child who grew up in poverty in Cincinnati, Ohio, (38th percentile). Figure 3, taken from that paper, shows the large spatial variation in intergenerational mobility across the United States using a heat map where darker values correspond to lower mobility.”
https://www.chicagofed.org/research/content-areas/mobility/intergenerational-economic-mobility
[https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-latest-poverty-income-and-food-insecurity-data-reveal-continuing-racial-disparities/](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/OEBHB/7/)
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-latest-poverty-income-and-food-insecurity-data-reveal-continuing-racial-disparities/
