U.S. poverty rate drops slightly, but experts fear worse ahead

The U.S. poverty rate fell slightly last year as Americans’ incomes rose alongside rising prices, according to new census data published Tuesday. But the data from 2025 did not reflect cuts to social assistance this year that experts fear will cause a rise in poverty soon.

Just over 1 in 10 Americans lived below the poverty line in 2025, the Census Bureau found, a half-percentage point drop since 2024.

The median American household income rose more than 2% in inflation-adjusted terms, to $87,460. And the numbers reflected a narrowing of the income gap between men and women: Women’s earnings from full-time, year-round work rose about 3%, while men’s earnings remained mostly flat, meaning the average full-time female worker went from earning about 80% as much as an average man to about 83% as much.

Officials touted the lowest official poverty rates on record for children and for Hispanic Americans, at about 13% of both groups.

But advocates for people in poverty warned that the gains might be short-lived.

The report reflects the number of people in poverty in America last year, before significant changes to the social safety net, passed by Congress in 2024 as part of a major tax and spending bill, took fuller effect this year. Experts who reviewed Tuesday’s numbers said they expect next year’s census data to show a substantial increase in poverty, due largely to cuts to the food stamps program.

“The nature of an annual statistic might mask some of the volatility that families already started to experience,” said Megan Curran, a poverty expert at Columbia University. “We know the reality on the ground is going to be looking quite different from what the numbers were” a year ago.

“This was the situation that families were in on the eve of the full implementation of these major changes to the safety net,” she said. “But it’s not reflecting what life is like for families who rely on SNAP and programs like that in September of 2026.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that 5 million people lost SNAP benefits between July 2025 and May 2026 as a result of the new legislation, which strengthens work requirements for food stamps and eventually shifts much more of the cost of the program onto states. In the first five months of this year, the organization found, the number of people receiving assistance fell in all but three states, and by as much as 20% in Arizona.

This year’s Supplemental Poverty Measure — a more sophisticated method that takes into account families’ expenses and government benefits, rather than just marking whether their income falls above or below the poverty line — remained basically unchanged since last year, designating about 13% of Americans as impoverished. Advocates said they expect the SPM to rise next year as well, as government benefits decrease.

Chastity Lord, president of an anti-poverty program for single mothers and their children, said rising prices have pushed women to take on more work this year to support their families, as reflected in the rising female income numbers. Overall, the average income for full-time, year-round work stayed flat this year while overall household income rose, reflecting more income from other sources including gig work, as well as retirement benefits and other inputs.

“You’re talking about rising gas prices, rising food prices, rising utility prices. Those are baseline expenses that when they don’t get paid, the engine doesn’t run of life, and folks are having to do what they need to do,” said Lord, whose organization — Jeremiah Program — supports working mothers in nine cities around the country. “Where you’re really seeing supplement around that employment is the gig economy. We call it the ‘survival economy.’”

She predicts a substantial increase in the SPM next year, when that gig work won’t be enough to replace widespread cuts to food stamps.

Tuesday’s data also showed that 92% of Americans had health insurance for some or all of the year, a near-historic high that has held fairly steady for the past decade.

But on health insurance, too, the 2025 numbers don’t reflect changes already underway this year. Substantial subsidies for people who buy their health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace expired on Jan. 1, and the healthcare group KFF predicted that as many as 5 million people could lose marketplace coverage in 2026, either because high premiums deterred them from signing up or because they failed to make payments during the year.

Meanwhile, premiums for employer-sponsored insurance spiked this year and are set to climb more next year, leading more people to choose to go without insurance.

Tuesday’s data comes from the annual Current Population Survey, a sample conducted by the Census Bureau early each year. The full decennial census that counts every American will next run in 2030. Last week, the Trump administration proposed both adding a question about citizenship to the 2030 Census and leaving immigrants without permanent residency status out of the count.