The U.S. poverty rate fell to 10.2% in 2025, its lowest level in the Census Bureau’s historical series, while median household income climbed 2.6% to a record $87,460 and child poverty also reached a new low.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
The share of Americans living below the federal poverty line declined for a second consecutive year in 2025, reaching the lowest level recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau as household income climbed to an all-time high.
The official poverty rate fell by half a percentage point to 10.2%, leaving approximately 34.5 million people below the poverty threshold last year, according to Census Bureau figures released Tuesday.
The decline followed a drop to 10.6% in 2024 and pushed the official rate to its lowest point since the government began its historical poverty series.
At the same time, median U.S. household income increased 2.6% to $87,460, setting a record.
The simultaneous rise in household income and decline in poverty provides a broad indication that household finances improved in 2025, although the figures do not capture every component of Americans’ economic well-being, including differences in regional living costs, household expenses and individual financial circumstances.
For a household consisting of two adults and two children, the Census Bureau’s official poverty threshold was $32,649 in 2025.
Anyone in such a family with annual money income below that level would be classified as living in poverty under the official measure.
The federal calculation uses pretax cash income and compares it with thresholds that vary according to family size and composition.
Unlike some other measures of economic hardship, the official poverty calculation generally does not count noncash government benefits such as food assistance or housing subsidies as income.
That distinction helps explain why the Census Bureau also publishes a Supplemental Poverty Measure, or SPM.
The supplemental rate stood at 13.1% in 2025 — substantially higher than the 10.2% official rate.
The two measures answer somewhat different questions.
The Supplemental Poverty Measure takes into account government programs and tax credits intended to help lower-income households while also subtracting expenses such as taxes, work-related costs and certain medical expenses. It additionally considers geographic differences in housing costs.
The official measure, meanwhile, provides the long-running benchmark used to compare poverty over decades.
Because of those differences, the supplemental rate can move differently from the official measure and should not be interpreted as contradicting it. The Census Bureau describes the SPM as an additional measure of economic well-being rather than a replacement for the official poverty rate.
Children experienced one of the most notable improvements in Tuesday’s report.
The official poverty rate for Americans under 18 fell to 13.4% in 2025, also reaching a historic low.
Child poverty has long exceeded the overall national rate, making the new figure significant even though millions of children continue to live in households below the federal poverty threshold.
The broader improvement comes as Washington continues debating the future of federal safety-net spending and how reductions or changes to government assistance programs could affect low-income households.
Those debates also illustrate why the distinction between the two poverty measures matters.
The official measure largely reflects cash income, meaning changes to noncash programs may not immediately appear in that figure.
The supplemental measure is more sensitive to policies involving tax credits, food assistance, housing subsidies and other benefits because those resources are incorporated into its calculation.
The Census Bureau previously reported an official poverty rate of 10.6% in 2024, representing 35.9 million people.
That means approximately 1.4 million fewer people were classified as poor under the official measure in 2025 compared with the previous year.
The latest numbers also continue a dramatic long-term decline from the earliest years of the federal poverty series.
When the Census Bureau began its modern historical series in 1959, poverty was considerably more widespread. The rate has moved substantially over subsequent decades in response to recessions, economic expansions, labor-market conditions, demographic changes and government policy.
The 2025 figure now represents the lowest point in that historical record.
Household income delivered another major milestone.
Median household income — the point at which half of U.S. households earn more and half earn less — reached $87,460 after rising 2.6%.
Because a median is less affected by extremely high earners than an average, economists commonly use it to assess how the typical household is faring.
The increase therefore suggests that income gains extended beyond the highest-income households, although national median figures do not show how evenly those gains were distributed among different demographic, geographic and income groups.
Tuesday’s Census release also provided a new snapshot of health insurance coverage.
Approximately 26.7 million Americans, representing 7.9% of the population, had no health insurance at any point during 2025.
The change from the previous year was not statistically significant, according to the Census Bureau, leaving the uninsured rate near historically low levels.
The bureau classifies someone as uninsured for the year only when that person had no form of health coverage at any point during the calendar year.
Someone covered for at least part of the year is considered insured under the annual Census measure.
For comparison, 92% of Americans — about 310 million people — had health coverage for some or all of 2024, while 8% were uninsured throughout that year.
The 2025 findings therefore present a generally improving picture across several of the government’s broadest measures of household economic well-being.
Official poverty fell for a second year and reached a record low. Child poverty declined to its lowest recorded rate. Median household income climbed to a record high. And the share of Americans without health insurance remained near historically low levels.
The supplemental poverty rate of 13.1%, however, shows that economic hardship remains more widespread when taxes, medical expenses, geographic living costs and government benefits are incorporated into the calculation.
Even with 34.5 million Americans still living below the official poverty threshold, the newest Census figures mark a significant statistical milestone: By the government’s longest-running measure, a smaller share of the U.S. population was living in poverty in 2025 than at any previous point in the historical series.
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