The U.S. Census Bureau recently released its annual report on poverty in the United States. The data shows that in 2025, 34,510,000 Americans — 10.2 percent of the total population — were poor.
In 2022, the poverty rate was the lowest on record for Black Americans at 17.1 percent. In 2023, the poverty rate for Black Americans rose to 17.9 percent. In 2024, 18.4 percent of Black Americans were poor. In 2025, the Black poverty rate dropped to 17.3 percent. This was 2.2 times the rate for non-Hispanic White Americans. More than 7.9 million African Americans were living with incomes below the official poverty rate.
The supplemental poverty measure (SPM) rate extends the official poverty measure by accounting for several government programs that are designed to assist low-income families but are not included in official poverty measure calculations. The SPM also accounts for geographic variation in housing expenses when calculating the poverty thresholds and includes federal and state taxes, work expenses, and medical expenses. The SPM does not replace the official poverty measure; however, it does provide a different metric of economic well-being that includes resources from government programs and tax credits to low-income families.
In 2025, the SPM poverty rate for Blacks was 20.1 percent, a slight decrease from 2024. The SPM poverty rate for Blacks in 2021 was 11.3 percent. The large increase in the SPM rate after 2021 was due to the end of many pandemic-related programs that expired. The SPM child poverty rate for Blacks under the age of 18 in 2025 was 22 percent, down slightly from 2024. In 2021, it was 8.1 percent
In 2025, 24.1 percent of all Black children in the United States under the age of 18 lived in poverty, down slightly from 2024. Only 8.5 percent of non-Hispanic White children were poor in 2025. Thus, Black children were nearly three times as likely to be poor as non-Hispanic White children.
