Poverty

The median household income in the United States increased less than a percent from 2017 to 2018, while the median earnings of workers in the United States rose 3.4%.

The data, released by the Census Bureau Tuesday, also shows that the official poverty rate in the United States dropped to 11.8%, a 0.5 percentage point decrease from 2017.

The official poverty rate fell to 11.8% in 2018 from 12.3% in 2017. That’s the fourth consecutive year showing a decrease, with the Census Bureau also noting that “In 2018, for the first time in 11 years, the official poverty rate was significantly lower than 2007, the year before the most recent recession.”

The most significant drops in poverty rates came for families with children and an unmarried female head householder. Those families saw a poverty rate drop of 2.5 percentage points from 41.6% in 2017 to 39.1% in 2018. Families headed by unmarried women, regardless of children, have the highest poverty rate of household types at 26.8%.

The poverty rate for individual children fell 1.2 percentage points from 17.4% in 2017 to 16.2% in 2018. For those living in the principal cities in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), the poverty rate also dropped 1.2 percentage points from 15.8% to 14.6%.

To learn more about poverty in the US, click here.