Poverty and income in the United States are strongly correlated with race. Black Americans are second most likely to experience poverty among all racial groups, with 21% living below the poverty threshold, following Native Americans at 25%. The hardships of poverty and the lack of a robust social safety net make it extremely likely that a person experiencing poverty will be unable to afford necessary expenses like food, health care costs, and housing, making it a key predictor for homelessness. Like many other modern outgrowths of inequity, the overrepresentation of Black people in homelessness is a direct result of slavery.
Poverty Rates and Disparities
The poverty rate measures the percentage of people living in poverty. The Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to detect who is poor. The poverty thresholds do not vary geographically, but they are updated annually for inflation with the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). This chart estimates the poverty rates of the population by race. Note that there is not enough data to show for the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander category.
People living in poverty are more vulnerable to losing access to the basic necessities of life such as shelter, heat, electricity, and food. Poverty also limits access to education, jobs, health care, and is related to lower educational and health outcomes in children. It is important to make sure that poverty declines for all racial and ethnic groups as our region grows in prosperity.
In 2022, the official poverty rate for Black adults ages 18 to 64 was 14.9%, numerically a historic low (though not statistically different from 2019). For example, Black individuals made up 20.1% of the population in poverty in 2022 but only 13.5% of the total population. The Hispanic population was also overrepresented in poverty (ratio of 1.5).
While the official poverty measure showed poverty rates declining between 2021 and 2022 for Black individuals, the SPM showed an increase from 11.3% in 2021 to 17.2% in 2022. This large increase in SPM poverty was due to the expiration of pandemic safety net programs like stimulus payments and expanded refundable tax credits.
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According to a U.S. Census Bureau ACS study, 23% of all African American men, women, and children live below the poverty level compared to just 13% of all Americans. An even higher percentage (33%) of Black children live in poverty compared to 18% of all children in America.
Poverty Rates by Family Type
Poverty rates for Black families vary based on the family type. While just under 19% of all Black families live below the poverty level, only 7% of Black married couple families live in poverty, which is considerably lower than the 31% of Black families headed by single women who live below the poverty line. The highest poverty rates (39%) are for Black families with children which are headed by single Black women.
As the chart below shows when considering Black families with and without children who live below the national poverty line the vast majority (74% or 1.4 million) are headed by single women and just 16% are headed by a married-couple family. When considering Black families who live above the national poverty line the more than half (53% or 3.7 million) are headed by married couples and just 37% (2.6 million) are headed by a single women.
Historical Trends in Poverty
The U.S. Census Bureau records historical poverty data among American families using its Current Population Survey and Annual Social and Economic Supplements. In 1967, about one third (33.9%) of all Black families lived below the poverty level compared to only 11% of all families in America. By 1990, the disparity gap between the two remained virtually the same despite a slight decrease in the overall poverty rate for both population groups. During the decade of the 1990s, while the nation was experiencing an economic boom, the poverty rate of Black families dropped from 29% in 1990 to 19% in 2000, virtually cutting the disparity in half. The economic downturn in the decade from 2000 to 2010 caused the increase of the Black family poverty rate to 24%.
In 1967, more than a half (56%) of Black families headed by single women lived below the national poverty level compared to 33% of all families in America headed by single women. During the decade of the 1990s, the poverty rate of families headed by Black single mothers dropped from 48% in 1990 to its lowest point (34%) in 2000. The economic downturn in the decade from 2000 to 2010 increased the Black family poverty rate to 39% by 2010. Since 2010, the Black family poverty rate decreased sightly to 37% by 2014.
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Black people’s inability to build meaningful wealth has its roots in the very inception of this nation. The abolition of outright slavery in the US quickly led to the introductions of even more insidious barriers to equity, including sharecropping, forced prison labor, Jim Crow segregation laws, and voter disenfranchisement.
Modern wealth disparities are also exacerbated by factors like patterns of inequity in income and employment. In 2019, the average white household income was $76,057 while for Black families it was $46,073, a difference of around forty percent. Reasons for this gap are varied. First, Black people are more likely than white people work hourly, poverty-wage jobs. Black people are also about twice as likely as white people to be unemployed (actively seeking work) than white people, a figure that has held steady for the last seventy years.
Black people are also less likely to have wealthy, homeowning parents. Research shows that having wealthier parents correlates strongly with economic stability later in life. Having parents homeowning parents increases the likelihood that a child will eventually go on to become a homeowner themselves. Historical forms of racism like housing discrimination mean that the parents and grandparents of Black people living today are far less likely to have owned homes than white members of their cohort. This means that where white people are more likely to benefit from generational cycles of wealth and ownership, Black people are less likely to go on to have wealth, own homes, or have stable housing.
Geographic Concentration of Poverty
People of color are more likely to live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty due to the long history of racial segregation in the United States. This segregation was forged through historical practices such as the expropriation of land from Indigenous people, racially exclusive housing covenants, and redlining. While many of these practices were explicitly aimed at Black Americans, they laid the foundation for patterns of segregation among other marginalized racial groups. Today, segregation is maintained through practices like discrimination in mortgage lending and exclusionary zoning policies.
In 2022, 12.5 percent of people of color lived in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared to 3.6 percent of the white population-a gap of about 9 percentage points. South Dakota has the highest percentage of Native American residents living in high-poverty neighborhoods.
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k grant revitalizes Thomasville’s Dewy City with housing and food initiatives
Community-Based Solutions
Evergreen Cooperatives build wealth in Cleveland neighborhoods. Consisting of foundations, hospitals, universities, and the City, the Evergreen Cooperatives are creating jobs and wealth-building opportunities in some of the highest poverty neighborhoods in Cleveland by leveraging a portion of their multibillion dollar annual business expenditures to start and convert worker-owned cooperatives.
Between 2009 and 2013, the Evergreen Cooperatives launched an industrial laundry, a solar installation firm, and an urban farm. Since its founding, the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry has expanded and employs 200 workers, 100 of whom are employee-workers with profit-sharing benefits of about $9,000 annually. In 2018, Evergreen launched the Fund for Employee Ownership, which aims to convert family businesses whose owners are approaching retirement into co-ops.
Public Assistance Programs
The amount of African Americans who receive public assistance varies greatly depending on the type of assistance. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 14.5% of African Americans receive housing assistance including government housing or section 8 housing, while 2.5% receive TANF cash assistance (formerly referred to as welfare checks). All of these statistics include those who receive benefits or those covered under the allotment of someone else’s benefits which does not always include everyone who lives in the household.
The largest benefits received by African Americans include the 29% receiving Medicaid health insurance and 30% of African Americans who receive SNAP benefits (Food Stamps). Despite running stereotypes that associate African Americans as being the primary consumers of the SNAP program formerly known as and commonly referred to as the Food Stamp program, White Americans are actually the primary benefactors of this program. In 2022 there were 4.1 million African American households participating in SNAP/Food Stamps (24%) compared to 6.8 million White households who make up largest percent of total households using SNAP/Food Stamps. However, when adjusted for population Black households do use SNAP/Food Stamps at a higher rate.
Southeast Michigan Poverty Trends
Between 2022 and 2023, poverty rates either declined or remained unchanged except for American Indian and Alaska Native, where they rose from 19% to 21%. Note that because this data are from the 2019-2023, 5-year American Community Survey (ACS), that these trends may not align with the recent increases in poverty levels found in the poverty rates measured by the 1-year ACS. Poverty levels in 2023 were greatest for Black or African Americans, where 1 in 4 live in poverty in Southeast Michigan; while poverty levels were lowest for Whites and Asians, where 1 in 10 live in poverty.
Caution: This chart uses 5-year American Community Survey data which is not directly comparable to the 1-year American Community Survey data. The observation year represents the last year of the 5-year survey, for example, year 2022 represents the survey period of 2018-2022. Some race categories have a small sample size, resulting in large observational variances.
