Contents

• Introduction
• Poverty Data As Estimates: Survey Data Collection and Poverty Measure Definitions
• How the Official Poverty Measure Is Computed
• The SPM: Its Relevance in Relation to the Official Measure
• Historical Perspective Under the Official Poverty Measure
• Official Poverty by Demographic Group
• Family Structure
• Age
• Race and Hispanic Origin
• Work Status
• Poverty Rates by State
• Supplemental Poverty Measure
• How the Official Poverty Measure Was Developed
• Motivation for a Supplemental Poverty Measure
• Official and Supplemental Poverty Findings for 2024
• SPM and Official Poverty Rates for 2024
• SPM Resource Components in 2024: Their Effect on SPM Estimates

Summary

The federal government publishes poverty statistics using two measures: the official poverty measure and the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). These two measures tell different stories about who is poor in the United States because they measure different things. Both measures compare the income of a family or unrelated individual with a measure of need for that same family or individual. If the income (measured in dollars) is less than the measure of need (also measured in dollars), the family or unrelated individual is considered to be in poverty; if the income is greater than or equal to the measure of need, the family or individual is classified as not being in poverty. The measures differ as to what is counted as income or included in the measure of need; the SPM generally incorporates a broader conception of family unit, need, and income.

For the official measure in 2024, the poverty rate—the percentage of people in poverty—fell to 10.6%, representing 35.9 million people in the United States who lived in poverty, down from 11.1% in 2023. Under the SPM, the poverty rate registered no change from the previous year, at 12.9%. The SPM principally differs from the official poverty measure in that the SPM takes account of taxes, work expenses, and noncash resources in ways the official measure does not. The SPM poverty rate reflects the cost of housing (which is included in the SPM's computation of basic needs), the amounts received among certain noncash benefits and refundable tax credits, and work-related expenses that partially offset the incomes gained as more persons worked.

Introduction

The federal government publishes poverty statistics using two measures: the official poverty measure and the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). These two measures tell different stories about who is poor in the United States because they measure different things. Both measures compare the resources of a family or unrelated individual with a measure of need for that same family or individual. If the resources (using some definition of income, measured in dollars) are less than the measure of need (a "poverty threshold," also measured in dollars), the family or unrelated individual is considered to be in poverty; if resources are greater than or equal to the measure of need, the family or individual is classified as not being in poverty. The measures differ as to what is counted as resources or included in the measure of need:

• Under the official poverty measure, the measure of need was originally computed using family expenditure data from 1955 and food costs in 1962. These computations used the cost of a tightly constrained food budget and the average share of family income that was spent on food to represent the overall income amounts (the poverty thresholds) at which a family whose basic needs overall might have been similarly constrained. These official poverty thresholds have been updated annually for inflation. For the resources necessary to meet that level of need, the official poverty measure counts income in the form of cash only, before taxes—meaning that tax credits and the monetary value of noncash benefits are not counted.
• Under the SPM, the measure of need is based on recent spending data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey; namely, 83% of median family spending on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, internet, and telephone service (plus an extra 20% for miscellaneous expenses such as personal care products), as opposed to being computed once and indexed forward for inflation (as is done for the official measure).¹ For the resources necessary to meet that level of need, the SPM uses after-tax income (which includes tax credits), estimates the value of certain noncash benefits (such as food assistance), and subtracts some expenditures (such as work-related expenses, child care expenses, and medical expenses paid out of pocket) that families cannot use toward the categories of basic needs that are used to define the SPM poverty level. This approach was intended to better reflect the economic choices families currently face, and to better reflect the effects of government programs on the low-income population, than does the official measure.

For the official measure in 2024, the "poverty rate"—the percentage of people in poverty—fell to 10.6%, representing 35.9 million people who lived in poverty, down from 11.1% in 2023.² Under the SPM, the poverty rate was 12.9% and did not register any change from the previous year. The SPM differs from the official poverty measure in that the SPM takes account of taxes, work expenses, and noncash resources in ways the official measure does not. The SPM poverty rate reflects the cost of housing (which is included in the SPM's computation of basic needs), the amounts received among certain noncash benefits and refundable tax credits, and work-related expenses that partially offset the incomes gained as more persons worked.

This report presents a general overview of poverty in the United States. It introduces the concepts and data sources used in defining and measuring poverty. It then offers a historical perspective on poverty at the national level by presenting trend data on the official poverty measure. Next, the report focuses on poverty by demographic group, mainly by comparing 2023 estimates with 2024 estimates, along four characteristics:

• family structure, because poverty is defined according to the composition, needs, and income of families and because antipoverty interventions have often been targeted to families;
• age, because age groups vary in the types and sources of income available to them and because congressional policymaking has often focused on children and the aged population;
• race and Hispanic origin, because poverty rates among these demographic groups historically have had wide differences; and
• work status, because economic well-being is typically tied to the current or past work of oneself or one's family members.

State poverty rates are then presented to provide a geographical perspective on poverty throughout the United States. Lastly, the report describes the SPM, a newer measure that is designed to improve upon some of the official poverty measure's limitations, and illustrates how the SPM offers a different view of poverty from the official measure. This different view is particularly relevant for examining the impact on poverty of the refundable tax credits and other measures Congress uses to provide assistance to persons with low income.

Poverty Data As Estimates: Survey Data Collection and Poverty Measure Definitions

The numbers and percentages of people in poverty presented in this report are based on the Census Bureau's estimates.³ While the official measure has been regarded as a historically consistent benchmark rather than a complete description of what people and families need to live,⁴ it offers a measure of economic hardship faced by the low-income population. The poverty measure compares family income with a dollar amount called a "poverty threshold," a level below which the family is considered to be poor. The Census Bureau releases these poverty estimates every September for the prior calendar year. Most of the comparisons discussed in this report are year to year. The report considers a number or percentage to have changed from the previous year, or to be different from another number or percentage, only if the difference is statistically significant at the 90% confidence level.⁵

How the Official Poverty Measure Is Computed

The Census Bureau determines a person's poverty status by comparing his or her resources with a measure of need. For the official measure, the term "resources" is defined as total family income before taxes, and the measure of "need" is a dollar amount called a "poverty threshold." There are 48 poverty thresholds, which vary by family size and composition. If a person lives with other people to whom he or she is related by birth, marriage, or adoption, the money income from all family members is used to determine his or her poverty status. If a person does not live with any family members, his or her own income is used. Only "money income" before taxes is used in calculating the official poverty measure, meaning this measure does not treat in-kind benefits—such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), housing subsidies, or employer-provided benefits—as income. Because the official measure uses income before taxes, it also excludes refundable tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), as well as stimulus payments that were made as refundable tax credits.

The poverty threshold dollar amounts vary by the size of the family (from one person not living in a family to nine or more family members living together) and the ages of the family members (how many of the members are children under 18 and whether or not the family head is 65 or older). Collectively, these poverty thresholds are often referred to as the poverty line. As a rough guide, the poverty line in 2024 can be thought of as $32,130 for a family of four; $24,950 for a family of three; $20,220 for a family of two; or $15,940 for an individual not living in a family, although the official measure is actually much more detailed.⁶

The threshold dollar amounts are updated annually for inflation using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). The same thresholds are applied throughout the country: No adjustment is made for geographic variations in living expenses.⁷

The official poverty measure used in this report is the federal government's definition of poverty for statistical purposes, such as comparing the number or percentage in poverty over time. A related definition of poverty, the poverty guidelines published by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is used for administrative purposes, such as determining eligibility for assistance programs, and will not be discussed in this report.⁸

The SPM: Its Relevance in Relation to the Official Measure

Over the past several decades, criticisms of the official poverty measure have led to the development of an alternative research measure called the SPM, which the Census Bureau also computes and releases. Statistics comparing the official measure with the SPM are provided at the conclusion of this report. The SPM includes adjustments to reflect geographic variations in housing costs and the estimated effects of taxes and in-kind benefits (such as housing, energy, and food assistance) on poverty, while the official measure does not. The SPM also takes a more expansive approach than the official measure in recognizing relationships among household members for the purpose of identifying how those members share costs and pool resources. Furthermore, while one-time payments such as economic stimuli are not considered as part of the official definition of income, these payments are considered as resources in the SPM. Because some types of tax credits and noncash benefits provide financial help to families and individuals with low incomes, the SPM may be of interest to policymakers.

The official measure provides a comparison of the population below poverty over a longer period than does the SPM, including some years before many current antipoverty assistance programs had been developed.⁹

Historical Perspective Under the Official Poverty Measure

Figure 1 shows the number and percentage of the population estimated to be below the official poverty line from the earliest year in which these data were available (1959) through the most recent (2024). Because the total U.S. population has grown over time, poverty rates are useful for historical comparisons because they control for population growth.

Poverty rates fell through the 1960s. Since then, they have generally risen and fallen according to the economic cycle, though during the two expansions prior to the pandemic, official poverty rates did not fall measurably until four to six years into the expansion. The current economic expansion broke that pattern by registering a year-to-year decrease three years after the end of the latest recession: The most recent recession occurred from February to April 2020, and the current expansion began in May 2020. During the first two years since then, the official poverty rate did not decline from year to year.¹⁰ In addition to the 10.6% rate in 2024, historically notable lows in the official poverty rate occurred in 1973 (11.1%), 2000 (11.3%), and 2019 (10.5%).¹¹ Peaks occurred in 1983 (15.2%), 1993 (15.1%), and 2010 (15.1%).¹²

Poverty rates tend to rise during and after recessions, as opposed to leading economic indicators such as new housing construction, which often change before the overall economy does. The poverty rate's lag is explainable in part by the way it is measured: It uses income from the entire calendar year.¹³

Figure 1. Official Poverty Rate and Number of Persons in Poverty: 1959 to 2024 (poverty rates in percentages, number of persons in millions; shaded bars indicate recessions)

Sources: Congressional Research Service (CRS), based on data from Table A-3 in Emily A. Shrider and Christina Bijou, Poverty in the United States: 2024, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Report P60-287, September 9, 2025, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-287.html. Recession dates were obtained from the National Bureau of Economic Research at https://www.nber.org/research/data/us-business-cycle-expansions-and-contractions. Notes: The 2019 and 2020 estimates were biased downward because of increased nonresponse associated with telephone-only interviewing during the pandemic; response rates since the pandemic did not return to their pre-pandemic levels (for details, see Adam Bee and Jonathan Rothbaum, "Using Administrative Data to Evaluate Nonresponse Bias in the 2025 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement," Research Matters [blog], U.S. Census Bureau, September 9, 2025, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/research-matters/2025/09/administrative-data-nonresponse-bias-cps-asec.html). A summary of previous methodological changes to the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement and the poverty measure, with references to technical descriptions of the changes, is available in Social Security Administration, "Appendix C: Poverty Data," in Annual Statistical Supplement, 2022, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2022/apnc.pdf.

Official Poverty by Demographic Group

The decline in the official poverty rate in 2024 was not universal but occurred among a few demographic groups. Discussed below are the declines among married-couple families and women not in families, working-age adults, non-Hispanic Whites, and persons who worked part-time or part-year (i.e., less than full-time year-round), in the context of broader demographic trends.

Family Structure

Because poverty status is determined at the family level by comparing resources with a measure of need, vulnerability to poverty may differ among families of different compositions. In this section, poverty data by family structure are presented using the official poverty measure, with families defined as persons related by birth, marriage, or adoption to the householder (the person in whose name the home is owned or rented). In the "Supplemental Poverty Measure" section of this report, a different definition will be used.

In general, women have higher poverty rates than men: 11.6% compared with 9.6% in 2024. Historically, families with a female householder and no spouse present (female-householder families) have had higher poverty rates than both married-couple families and families with a male householder and no spouse present (male-householder families). This remained true in 2024: The poverty rate among female-householder families was 21.8%, compared with 11.0% for male-householder families and 4.3% for married-couple families (Figure 2). The 2024 female-householder poverty rate is the latest in a series of lower poverty rates for this group, compared with their rates in previous decades.¹⁴ The poverty rate for men living alone or only with non-relatives decreased (16.6% in 2024, down from 17.9% in 2023).

Figure 2. Official Poverty Rates of Families by Family Structure: 2024 (poverty rates in percentages)

Source: CRS, based on poverty data from Table A-2 in Emily A. Shrider and Christina Bijou, Poverty in the United States: 2024, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Report P60-287, September 9, 2025, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-287.html. Notes: The poverty rates above include only families with a householder (the survey's reference person for the household, typically the person in whose name the home is owned or rented). The Census Bureau defines a family as people living together who are related by birth, marriage, or adoption.

Age

When poverty is examined by age, the three main groups (under 18, 18 to 64, and 65 and older) are noteworthy for distinct reasons. People under age 18, particularly young children below their state's legal working age, are typically dependent on other family members for income. People aged 18 to 64, referred to hereinafter as the "working-age" population, typically have wages and salaries as their greatest source of income. People aged 65 and older, referred to as the "aged population," are often eligible for retirement benefits, and those who do retire typically experience a change in their primary source of income, such as from earnings to Social Security.

Figure 3 illustrates poverty rates historically by age because the overall poverty rate (seen in Figure 1) masks the historical decline in poverty among the aged population. Before 1974, the poverty rate for people aged 65 and over was the highest of the three age groups. In 1966, people aged 65 and over had a poverty rate of 28.5%, compared with 17.6% for people under 18 and 10.5% for working-age adults. By 1974, the poverty rate for people aged 65 and over had fallen to 14.6%, compared with 15.4% for people under 18 and 8.3% for working-age adults. Since then, people under 18 have had the highest poverty rate of the three groups.¹⁵ The poverty rate among the 65-and-older population eventually fell below the poverty rate of the working-age population and, except for an uptick in 2021, has trended below that group since the early 2000s.

Official poverty rates fell for children and working-age adults from 2023 to 2024, while the aged experienced no poverty rate decline. Official poverty rates in 2024 were 14.3% for children (down from 15.3% in 2023), 9.6% for the working-age population (down from 10.0% in 2023), and 9.9% for the aged population.

If poverty rates for these groups are examined using the SPM, the picture changes markedly. The official poverty measure uses family income before taxes and thus does not count refundable tax credits or noncash benefits, nor does it subtract medical or work-related expenses, all of which affect age groups in different ways. These differences are discussed in the "Official and Supplemental Poverty Findings for 2024" section.

Figure 3. Official Poverty Rates by Age: 1959 to 2024 (poverty rates in percentages; shaded bars indicate recessions)

Sources: CRS, based on data from Table A-3 in Emily A. Shrider and Christina Bijou, Poverty in the United States: 2024, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Report P60-287, September 9, 2025, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-287.html. Recession dates were obtained from the National Bureau of Economic Research at https://www.nber.org/research/data/us-business-cycle-expansions-and-contractions. Notes: The 2019 and 2020 estimates were biased downward because of increased nonresponse associated with telephone-only interviewing during the pandemic; response rates since the pandemic did not return to their pre-pandemic levels (for details, see Adam Bee and Jonathan Rothbaum, "Using Administrative Data to Evaluate Nonresponse Bias in the 2025 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement," Research Matters [blog], U.S. Census Bureau, September 9, 2025, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/research-matters/2025/09/administrative-data-nonresponse-bias-cps-asec.html). A summary of previous methodological changes to the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement and the poverty measure, with references to technical descriptions of the changes, is available in Social Security Administration, "Appendix C: Poverty Data" in Annual Statistical Supplement, 2022, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2022/apnc.pdf.

Race and Hispanic Origin¹⁶

Poverty rates vary by race and Hispanic origin, as shown in Figure 4.¹⁷ In surveys, Hispanic origin is asked separately from race; accordingly, people identifying as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race.¹⁸ The official poverty rate fell among the Asian alone population from 9.1% in 2023 to 7.5% in 2024. Over the same period, the poverty rate for the population identifying as Hispanic fell from 16.6% in 2023 to 15.0% in 2024. None of the other race or origin groups registered a statistically significant change in their official poverty rates.¹⁹

Figure 4. Official Poverty Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin: 2024 (poverty rates in percentages)

Source: CRS, based on data from Table A-1 in Emily A. Shrider and Christina Bijou, Poverty in the United States: 2024, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Report P60-287, September 9, 2025, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-287.html. Notes: People of Hispanic origin may be of any race. Additionally, respondents may identify with one or more racial groups. Except for "All persons," "Two or more races," and "Hispanic," the remaining groups shown include those who identified with one race only. The "Non-Hispanic White alone" group includes only the White non-Hispanic population, while the "Black alone," "Asian alone," and "American Indian and Alaska Native alone" groups include persons who identify as Hispanic. Data for Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders are not shown separately.

Work Status

Earnings from work are an important source of income for many individuals and families. The poverty rates among workers historically have been and continue to be lower than among nonworkers. Looking at the working-age population in 2024, 4.4% of workers were in poverty, compared with 28.2% of nonworkers (down from 29.7% of nonworkers in 2023).

Workers may be broken out further into those who worked full-time year-round, meaning they worked at least 50 weeks in the year (including paid vacations and sick leave) for at least 35 hours per week, and those who worked less than full-time year-round. To have worked less than full-time year-round, a person must have worked at least 1 week but for fewer than 50 weeks, fewer than 35 hours per week, or both: These are part-time or part-year workers. Among the working-age population, full-time year-round workers experienced a poverty rate of 1.8% in 2024, while for part-time or part-year workers, the poverty rate was 11.4% (neither figure registered a statistically significant change from 2023). Thus, having a job reduces the likelihood of being in poverty but does not guarantee that a person would avoid poverty.

While those data focused on the poverty status of working-age individuals and whether or not they had jobs, poverty is not limited to the working-age population. Most children (defined for this report as all persons under age 18) cannot earn a living and are dependent on older family members' income. Most persons age 65 and older are considered to be retirement age. While many in the aged population can and do work, programs such as Social Security were put in place to ensure that a basic level of income could be provided for the aged who no longer want to or are able to work. Further, persons in the working-age population may not be able to work because they are caring for other family members, need care themselves, or cannot find jobs. These populations are not insulated from the effects of poverty—their family income, and in turn their poverty status, is affected by the earnings of other family members. For that reason, Table 1 examines the entire population by the number of working family members and whether those family members worked full-time year-round or part-time or part-year. Table 1 is intended to illustrate the effects of work on poverty throughout the entire population, not just on those who are able to work.²⁰

As can be seen in Table 1, poverty rates decrease as the number of workers in the family or their hours or weeks worked increases (from 32.5% for those who did not live with any workers in 2024 and were not workers themselves to 0.4% for those in families with two or more full-time year-round workers). Of the 35.9 million persons living in poverty in 2024, approximately 29.1 million lived alone or in families without any full-time workers (the first two rows of the table). Nearly all of those living in poverty lived with fewer than two full-time year-round workers.

Poverty Rates by State²¹

Poverty is not equally prevalent in all parts of the country. Using estimates from the American Community Survey (ACS), Figure 5 shows states with relatively high poverty rates across parts of the Appalachians, the Southwest, the Mississippi Delta and the Southeast, as well as in New York and Michigan, compared with the 12.1% estimated for the nation's poverty rate. The ACS is recommended for analyzing poverty rates at the state level and for smaller geographic areas because it has the largest sample size of any of the Census Bureau's household surveys.

Puerto Rico's poverty rate was 37.3% (± 1.0), higher than the other areas shown. Among the states and the District of Columbia, the poverty rate in Louisiana (18.7% ± 0.6), seemingly the highest, was not statistically distinguishable from the rates in Mississippi (17.8% ± 0.8) and the District of Columbia (17.3% ± 1.7). The poverty rate in New Hampshire (7.2% ± 0.6) was the lowest. When poverty rates are compared geographically, the official poverty thresholds are not adjusted for geographic variations in the cost of living—the same thresholds are used nationwide. Thus, an area with a lower cost of living accompanied by lower wages will appear to have a higher poverty rate than an area with a higher cost of living and higher wages, even if individuals' purchasing power were exactly the same in both areas.

Figure 5. State Poverty Rates: 2024 (poverty rates in percentages)

Source: CRS, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2024 One-Year Estimates, Table S1701, queried for the U.S., all states and the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Note: Data for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are treated as state equivalents in the Census Bureau's Table S1701.

Supplemental Poverty Measure

Criticisms of the official poverty measure led to the development of the SPM. Described below are the development of the official measure, its limitations, attempts to remedy those limitations, the research efforts that eventually led to the SPM's first release in 2011, and a comparison of poverty rates in 2024 based on the SPM and the official measure.²²

How the Official Poverty Measure Was Developed

The poverty thresholds were originally developed in the early 1960s by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration. Rather than attempt to compute a family budget by using prices for all essential items that low-income families need to live, Orshansky focused on food costs.²³ Unlike other goods and services such as housing or transportation, which did not have a generally agreed-upon level of adequacy, minimum standards for nutrition were known and widely accepted. According to a 1955 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) food consumption survey, families spent an average of roughly one-third of their income on food. Therefore, using the cost of a minimum food budget²⁴ and multiplying that figure by three yielded a figure for total family income. That computation was possible because USDA had already published recommended food budgets as a way to address the nutritional needs of families experiencing economic stress. Some additional adjustments were made to derive poverty thresholds for two-person families and individuals not living in families to reflect the relatively higher fixed costs of smaller households.

Motivation for a Supplemental Poverty Measure

While the official poverty measure has been used for 60 years as the source of official statistics on poverty in the United States, it has received criticism over the years for several reasons. First, it does not take into account benefits from most of the largest programs that aid the low-income population. For instance, it uses money income before taxes—meaning that it does not necessarily measure the income available for individuals to spend, which for most people is after-tax income. Therefore, any effects of tax credits designed to assist persons with low income are not captured by the official measure. The focus on money income also does not account for in-kind benefit programs designed to help the poor, such as SNAP or housing assistance. The official measure has also been criticized for the way it characterizes families' and individuals' needs in the poverty thresholds. That is, the method used to compute the dollar amounts used in the thresholds, which were originally based on food expenditures in the 1950s and food costs in the 1960s, does not accurately reflect current needs and available goods and services.²⁵ The official measure also does not take account of the sharing of expenses and income among household members not related by birth, marriage, or adoption. And, as mentioned earlier, the official thresholds do not take account of geographic variations in the cost of living.

In 1995, a panel from the National Academy of Sciences issued a report, Measuring Poverty: A New Approach, which recommended improvements to the poverty measure.²⁶ Among the suggested improvements were to have the poverty thresholds reflect the costs of food, clothing, shelter, utilities, and a little bit extra to allow for miscellaneous needs;²⁷ to broaden the definition of family; to include geographic adjustments as part of the measure's computation; to include the out-of-pocket costs of medical expenses in the measure's computation;²⁸ and to subtract work-related expenses from income. An overarching goal of the recommendations was to make the poverty measure more closely aligned with the real-life needs and available resources of the low-income population, as well as the changes that have taken place over time in their circumstances, owing to changes in the nation's economy, society, and public policies (see Table 2).

After over a decade-and-a-half of research to implement and refine the methodology suggested by the panel, conducted both within the Census Bureau and by other federal agencies and the academic community, the Census Bureau issued the first report using the SPM in 2011.²⁹

Official and Supplemental Poverty Findings for 2024³⁰

Compared with the official measure, the SPM takes into account greater detail of individuals' and families' living arrangements and provides a more up-to-date accounting of the costs and resources available to them. Because the SPM recognizes greater detail in relationships among household members and geographically adjusts housing costs, it provides an updated rendering, compared with the official measure, of the circumstances in which the poor live. In that context, some point out that the SPM's measurement of taxes, transfers, and expenses may offer policymakers a clearer view of how government policies affect the population living in poverty today. However, the SPM was developed as a research measure, and the Office of Management and Budget set the expectation that it would be revised periodically to incorporate improved measurement methods and newer sources of data as they became available; it was not developed for administrative purposes.³¹ The fact that tax liabilities and credits are modeled, or that in-kind benefits are estimated using limited data, can be useful to bear in mind when comparing SPM estimates with official poverty estimates or when any changes to the SPM methodology are implemented in the future.³² Conversely, the official measure's consistency over a longer time span makes it easier for policymakers and researchers to make historical comparisons.

SPM and Official Poverty Rates for 2024

Under the SPM, the profile of the population is different from the profile under the official measure. The SPM poverty rate in 2024 was 12.9%, statistically unchanged from 2023 and 2.3 percentage points higher than the 10.6% under the official measure (see Figure 6). This variation stems from differences in how the SPM thresholds are computed and from the additions and subtractions to the SPM's income measure that are depicted in Figure 7.³⁷

For the official measure, poverty rates for children and working-age adults decreased from 2023 to 2024, but for the SPM, both the comparative ranking of the age groups' poverty rates and their year-to-year changes were different from their counterparts under the official measure.³⁸ Poverty rates under the SPM were 13.4% for children (no statistical change), 12.2% for working-age adults (no statistical change), and 15.0% for the aged, up from 14.2% in 2023. These different results stemmed from the definitions of income and family under the SPM. Out-of-pocket medical expenses, which are subtracted from SPM income (making the poverty rate higher than it would be without the subtraction), are highest for the aged. The refundable portions of the CTC; SNAP; the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and school lunches all target families with children. Counting the values of these noncash benefits lowers the poverty rate from what it would have been without them. Work-related expenses, incurred by the working-age population, are subtracted from income, thus elevating the poverty rate relative to what it would have been without the subtraction.

Figure 6. Poverty Rates Under Official Measure and SPM, by Age and by Region: 2024 (poverty rates in percentages)

Source: CRS, based on data from Table B-4 in Emily A. Shrider and Christina Bijou, Poverty in the United States: 2024, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Report P60-287, September 9, 2025, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-287.html. Note: Figures include unrelated individuals under age 15 (such as foster children), who are not usually included in official poverty estimates.

Poverty rates by region also differed under the SPM compared with the official measure because of the geographic adjustment of housing costs in the SPM poverty thresholds. In the Northeast, South, and West, the SPM poverty rate was higher than the official poverty rate by 2.6 percentage points, 2.0 percentage points, and 4.8 percentage points, respectively (Figure 6). Housing costs are higher in the Northeast and West compared with the U.S. average, which is consistent with their SPM poverty rates being higher than their official poverty rates, although in the South housing costs are lower than the U.S. average.³⁹ In the Midwest, where housing costs are the lowest of the nation's four regions, the SPM poverty rate was not significantly different from the official rate. None of the regions experienced a statistically significant change in their poverty rate from the previous year.

SPM Resource Components in 2024: Their Effect on SPM Estimates

Figure 7 illustrates the impact of various resource components on the number of people identified as poor using the SPM. Bars pointing to the left of the vertical axis (negative) indicate the number of people kept out of the population identified as poor by the SPM's treatment of that resource component. Bars pointing to the right of the vertical axis (positive) indicate the number of people added to the estimated poor population by the SPM's treatment of the component.

These data show how the population estimated to be poor would change if the SPM omitted a particular component (either by subtracting resources or failing to subtract taxes and expenses) but do not take into account any behavioral changes people would make in the absence of any one program, tax, credit, or expense. Furthermore, the data illustrate changes to the poverty population estimate with each component considered in isolation. People are often affected by multiple resource components; therefore, the numbers represented by separate bars should not be added together.

Social Security income, which is included in both the SPM and official poverty measures, had the biggest impact on the number of persons kept out of poverty (28.7 million in 2024 according to the SPM). While it was designed to be an income insurance program for workers and their families and not targeted specifically to the poor, it had a large antipoverty effect nevertheless. While most people kept out of poverty by Social Security were ages 65 and older (20.1 million), a substantial minority were younger: 7.2 million were aged 18 to 64, and 1.4 million were under age 18. Some of those in the younger age groups are Social Security recipients themselves because of a disability, but others were kept out of poverty because an older family member received it.

Refundable tax credits are measured only in the SPM, not the official measure; they helped 6.8 million persons avoid poverty in 2024. One such credit, the refundable portion of the CTC, helped 2.5 million avoid poverty in 2024.⁴⁰ SNAP helped 3.6 million avoid poverty in 2024 under the SPM.

Work expenses and child care expenses combined, which in the SPM are capped at the amount of the earnings of the lowest-earning adult in the family, are subtracted from the SPM income measure. This subtraction led to 4.0 million persons being categorized as impoverished under the SPM in 2024 who otherwise would not have been so categorized. The SPM deduction for Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes paid had a similar effect: Once FICA taxes were subtracted from income, 4.5 million persons in 2024 were counted as being in poverty under the SPM who otherwise would not have been.

The difference between the two measures can be further understood by comparing which persons were in poverty according to one measure but not under the other. Among people in poverty in 2024 under only one of the measures, 8.0 million were classified as poor by the official measure and nonpoor by the SPM, while about twice as many (15.8 million) were classified as poor by the SPM but nonpoor by the official measure.⁴¹ For those who were poor under the official measure but nonpoor under the SPM, the SPM's broader family definition tended to include more full-time workers in the family. These persons had a greater cash income under the SPM, despite having (in many cases) higher poverty thresholds and expenses subtracted. On the other hand, among those categorized as poor under the SPM but not under the official measure, medical expenses were higher than for their non-SPM-poor counterparts. They also received lower SNAP benefits, school lunch subsidies, EITC, and Additional Child Tax Credits (ACTC), on average, compared with their counterparts who were poor under the official measure but not under the SPM.

Figure 7. Effects of Each Transfer, Tax, or Expense on the Number of People Identified As Below Poverty Using the SPM: 2023 and 2024

Source: CRS, using data from Table B-7 in Emily A. Shrider and Christina Bijou, Poverty in the United States: 2024, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Report P60-287, September 9, 2025, at https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-287.html. Notes: "Number of people" represents the estimated change in the population who would be identified as poor if the SPM's income definition were changed to exclude or include each resource component. This can be thought of as the marginal impact that each resource or expense had on the population below poverty in 2024. Because people often are affected by more than one of the resource components listed, cumulative effects of multiple resources cannot be computed by summing the bars. The impact on the estimated number of poor was computed for each component in isolation, leaving all else equal. Child care expenses are included in work expenses. FICA = Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax (payroll tax for Social Security and Medicare); SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; SSI = Supplemental Security Income; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; WIC = The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

Calvin DeSouza, CRS Geospatial Information Systems Analyst, assisted with mapping, and Amber Wilhelm, CRS Visual Information Specialist, created the figures.

Footnotes