Poverty in the United States in 2015: In Brief (CRS Report for Congress)
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| Release Date |
Oct. 4, 2016 |
| Report Number |
R44644 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Joseph Dalaker, Analyst in Social Policy |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
Summary:
In 2015, approximately 43.1 million people, or 13.5% of the population, had incomes that fell below the official definition of poverty in the United States. These statistics represented a noticeable drop from the previous year, both in the number of poor, which had been 46.7 million in 2014, and the poverty rate (the percentage that were in poverty), which fell from 14.8%.
The drop in the U.S. poverty rate was broad-based, with poverty lessening among many demographic groups.
Families with a female householder and no spouse present (female-householder families) historically have had higher poverty rates than married-couple families and families with a male householder and no spouse present (male-householder families). This remained true in 2015, though all three family types experienced poverty rate declines.
Poverty rates also fell for all three broad age categories: children under 18, working-age adults 18 to 64, and persons 65 years and older.
Declines in poverty among the working-aged were driven by gains in the number working full-time year-round. In 2015, the working-age population grew by 1.0 million, but the number of full-time year-round workers (both poor and nonpoor) had a net gain of 2.3 million.
While having a job reduced the likelihood of being in poverty, it did not guarantee that a person or his or her family would avoid poverty.
Poverty rates fell among non-Hispanic whites, blacks, Hispanics, the American Indian and Alaska Native population, and Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders. No discernable change in poverty rates was detected for Asians.
Twenty-three states experienced poverty rate declines from 2014 to 2015.
Criticisms of the official poverty measure have inspired poverty measurement research and eventually led to the development of the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). The SPM uses different definitions of needs and resources than the official measure. The measure of need used in the SPM includes food, clothing, shelter, utilities, and a bit extra for miscellaneous expenses, adjusted for geographic variations in costs. Unlike the official measure, the SPM uses after-tax income and includes in-kind benefits which generally help families with children; subtracts out work-related expenses which are often incurred by the working-age population; and subtracts medical out-of-pocket expenses, which are incurred frequently by people age 65 and older, from income. Under the SPM, the profile of the poverty population is slightly different than under the official measure. After rounding, the SPM was about 0.7 percentage points higher in 2015 than the official poverty rate.
