The U.S. Census Bureau recently released its annual report on poverty in the United States. Nearly 36 million Americans were poor in 2024, 10.6 percent of the total population.
In 2022 poverty rate was the lowest on record for Black Americans at 17.1 percent. In 2023, the poverty rate for African Americans rose to 17.9 percent. In 2024, 18.4 percent of Black Americans were poor. This was 2.4 times the rate for non-Hispanic White Americans. More than 8.4 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 2024, the SPM poverty rate for Blacks was 20.7 percent, an increase from 18.5 percent in 2023. The SPM poverty rate for Blacks in 2021 was 11.3 percent. The large increase in the SPM rate 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 2024 was 22.7 percent, up from 20.3 percent in 2023 and 8.1 percent in 2021.
In 2024, 25.4 percent of all Black children in the United States under the age of 18 lived in poverty, up from 25 percent in 2033 and 22.3 percent in 2022. Only 8.2 percent of non-Hispanic White children were poor in 2024, down from 8.7 percent in 2023.
