Introduction

Calendar year 2020 saw the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and an accompanying rise in the poverty rate—the percentage of the population living in poverty (economic hardship characterized by low income). In 2020, approximately 37.2 million people had incomes below the official definition of poverty in the United States, which was an increase from 34.0 million people in 2019. The poverty rate rose to 11.4% from 10.5%. The increase in poverty was especially acute among the population under age 65, whose work statuses were most likely to have been affected by the economic fallout of the pandemic.

This report presents a general overview of poverty in the United States. It introduces the concepts and data sources used in defining and measuring poverty. It then offers a historical perspective on poverty at the national level by presenting trend data on the official poverty measure. Next, it focuses on poverty by demographic group, mainly by comparing 2020 estimates with 2019, along four characteristics:

• family structure, because poverty is defined according to the composition, needs, and resources of families, and because antipoverty interventions have often been targeted to families;
• age, because age groups vary in the types and sources of income available to them, and because congressional policymaking has often focused on children and the aged population;
• race and Hispanic origin, because poverty rates among these demographic groups historically have had wide differences; and
• work status, because economic well-being is typically tied to the current or past work of oneself or one's family members.

State poverty rates are then presented to provide a geographical perspective on poverty throughout the United States. Last, the report describes a newer poverty measure, the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which improves upon some of the official poverty measure's limitations, and illustrates how the SPM offers a different view of poverty from the official measure. This different view of poverty using the SPM is particularly relevant for examining the impact on poverty of the refundable tax credits and other measures Congress undertook to counteract the recession related to the pandemic.

Poverty Data As Estimates: Survey Collection during the Pandemic, the Official Poverty Measure, and the Supplemental Poverty Measure

The numbers and percentages of those in poverty presented in this report are based on the Census Bureau's estimates.¹ While this official measure is often regarded as a statistical yardstick rather than a complete description of what people and families need to live,² it does offer a measure of economic hardship faced by the low-income population. The poverty measure compares family income against a dollar amount called a poverty threshold, a level below which the family is considered to be poor. The Census Bureau releases these poverty estimates every September for the prior calendar year. Most of the comparisons discussed in this report are year-to-year. The report only considers a number or percentage to have changed from the previous year, or to be different from another number or percentage, if the difference has been tested to be statistically significant at the 90% confidence level.³

Effect of the Pandemic on Survey Collection and Survey Estimates

In addition to affecting people's poverty statuses, the pandemic also affected the collection of the data used to measure poverty, which in turn affects how the data may be interpreted. The official, annual data on income and poverty are measured retrospectively by a Census Bureau survey conducted in February, March, and April of the following year.⁴ Data collection for income in 2020 (collected in 2021) and 2019 (collected in 2020) were thus affected by social distancing measures that began in March 2020 in order to contain the pandemic. As a result, any interviews that would have been conducted in person, by a field representative visiting respondents at their homes, were conducted by telephone only.⁵ The switch to telephone-only interviewing contributed to a lower response rate, which affected the estimates.⁶ Further, the persons who did not respond were more likely to have had low incomes than high incomes.⁷ While data used to estimate poverty in both 2020 and 2019 were affected by these changes to survey data collection, this drop in survey response tempers the conclusions that may be drawn from the data, particularly when examining longer historical trends.⁸ The information in this report necessarily uses the official estimates. Detailed experimental estimates that adjust for nonresponse bias specific to the pandemic are not available for the characteristics discussed in the report.

How the Official Poverty Measure is Computed

The Census Bureau determines a person's poverty status by comparing his or her resources against a measure of need. For the official measure, resources is defined as total family income before taxes, and the measure of need is a dollar amount called a poverty threshold. There are 48 poverty thresholds that vary by family size and composition. If a person lives with other people to whom he or she is related by birth, marriage, or adoption, the money income from all family members is used to determine his or her poverty status. If a person does not live with any family members, his or her own income is used. Only money income before taxes is used in calculating the official poverty measure, meaning this measure does not treat in-kind benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), housing subsidies, or employer-provided benefits as income. Because the official measure uses income before taxes, it also excludes refundable tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, as well as stimulus payments that were made as refundable tax credits.

The poverty threshold dollar amounts vary by the size of the family (from one person not living in a family, to nine or more family members living together) and the ages of the family members (how many of the members are children under 18 and whether or not the family head is 65 or older). Collectively, these poverty thresholds are often referred to as the poverty line. As a rough guide, the poverty line in 2020 can be thought of as $26,496 for a family of four, $20,591 for a family of three, $16,733 for a family of two, or $13,171 for an individual not living in a family, though the official measure is actually much more detailed.⁹

The threshold dollar amounts are updated annually for inflation using the Consumer Price Index. Notably, the same thresholds are applied throughout the country: no adjustment is made for geographic variations in living expenses.¹⁰

The official poverty measure used in this report is the federal government's definition of poverty for statistical purposes, such as comparing the number or percentage in poverty over time. A related definition of poverty, the poverty guidelines published by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is used for administrative purposes such as eligibility criteria for assistance programs and will not be discussed in this report.¹¹

The Supplemental Poverty Measure: Its Relevance in Relation to the Official Measure

Over the past several decades, criticisms of the official poverty measure have led to the development of an alternative research measure called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which the Census Bureau also computes and releases. Statistics comparing the official measure with the SPM are provided at the conclusion of this report.

The SPM includes adjustments to reflect geographic variations in housing costs, and the estimated effects of taxes and in-kind benefits (such as housing, energy, and food assistance) on poverty, while the official measure does not. The SPM also takes a more expansive approach than the official measure in recognizing relationships among household members, for the purpose of identifying how those members share costs and pool resources. Furthermore, one-time payments such as economic stimuli are not considered as part of the official definition of income, but these payments are considered as resources in the SPM. Because some types of tax credits and noncash benefits provide financial help to families and individuals in poverty, the SPM may be of interest to policymakers, particularly in light of the economic stimulus payments and tax credits provided in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The official measure provides a comparison of the population below poverty over a longer period than does the SPM, including some years before many current antipoverty assistance programs had been developed.¹² In developing poverty-related legislation and conducting oversight on programs that aid the low-income population, policymakers may be interested in these historical trends.

Historical Perspective Under the Official Poverty Measure

Figure 1 shows a historical perspective of the number and percentage of the population below the poverty line. The number in poverty and the poverty rates are shown from the earliest year available (1959) through the most recent year available (2020). Because the total U.S. population has grown over time, poverty rates are useful for historical comparisons because they control for population growth.

Poverty rates fell through the 1960s. Since then, they have generally risen and fallen according to the economic cycle, though during the two most recent expansions poverty rates did not fall measurably until four to six years into the expansion. Historically notable lows occurred in 1973 (11.1%), 2000 (11.3%), and 2019 (10.5%).¹³ Poverty rate peaks occurred in 1983 (15.2%), 1993 (15.1%), and 2010 (15.1%).¹⁴

Poverty rates tend to rise during and after recessions, as opposed to leading economic indicators such as new housing construction, whose changes often precede changes in the performance of the overall economy. The poverty rate's lag is explainable in part by the way it is measured: it uses income from the entire calendar year.¹⁵

Figure 1. Number of Persons in Poverty and Poverty Rate: 1959 to 2020 (Poverty rates in percentages, number of persons in millions; shaded bars indicate recessions)

Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS), based on poverty data from Table B-4 of Emily A. Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports number P60-273, issued September 2021. Recession dates were obtained from the National Bureau of Economic Research at http://www2.nber.org/cycles/. Notes: The 2019 and 2020 estimates were biased downward because of increased nonresponse associated with telephone-only interviewing during the pandemic; for details, see the "Introduction" section. Two estimates are shown for 2013 because the Census Bureau implemented a change to the CPS ASEC income questions. Some households received the old questionnaire and others the new, so that it would be possible to see the effect of changing the questionnaire. The CPS ASEC processing system was also updated for 2017. Those updates did not affect the overall poverty rate, nor the poverty rates for children or the population aged 18-64, though the 2017 poverty rate for the aged was 0.3 percentage points higher than under the legacy system. For details, see John Creamer and Ashley Edwards, Examining Poverty in 2016 and 2017 Using the Legacy and Updated Current Population Survey Processing System, U.S. Census Bureau, Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division, Working Paper #2019-28, July 30, 2019, https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/2019/demo/SEHSD-WP2019-28.html.

Poverty by Demographic Group

Increases in poverty rates between 2019 and 2020 were widespread, occurring among married-couple families and female-householder families, children and working-age adults, the Hispanic and White non-Hispanic populations, and both workers and nonworkers.

Family Structure

Because poverty status is determined at the family level by comparing resources against a measure of need, vulnerability to poverty may differ among families of different compositions. In this section, poverty data by family structure are presented using the official poverty measure, with families defined as persons related by birth, marriage, or adoption to the householder (the person in whose name the home is owned or rented). In the "Supplemental Poverty Measure" section of this report, a different definition will be used.

In general, women have higher poverty rates than men: 12.6% compared with 10.2% in 2020. Both sexes experienced poverty rate increases from 2019 (from 11.5% for women and 9.4% for men). Historically, families with a female householder and no spouse present (female-householder families) have had higher poverty rates than both married-couple families and families with a male householder and no spouse present (male-householder families). This remained true in 2020: the poverty rate among female-householder families was 23.4%, compared with 11.4% for male-householder families and 4.7% for married-couple families (Figure 2).

Female-householder families experienced an increase of 1.2 percentage points in their poverty rate from 2019. Despite the increase, the 2020 poverty rate for female-householder families was the second-lowest reported for that group, though those estimates are somewhat lower than would be expected had in-person interviewing been available. Even though nonresponse affected low-income families more than high-income families, and female-householder families are more likely to be low income than the other family types, the 2020 poverty rate is the latest in a series of lower poverty rates for this group, compared with previous decades.¹⁶

Married-couple families experienced a poverty rate increase as well, from 4.0% in 2019 to 4.7% in 2020. No discernible change was detected for male-householder families, nor for persons living alone or with non-relatives only (19.1% in 2020).

Figure 2. Poverty Rates of Families by Family Structure: 2020 (Poverty rates in percentages)

Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS), based on poverty data from Table B-1 of Emily A. Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports number P60-273, issued September 2021. Notes: The poverty rates above include only families with a householder (the survey's reference person for the household; typically the person in whose name the home is owned or rented). The Census Bureau defines a family as those living together related by birth, marriage, or adoption.

Age

When examining poverty by age, the three main groups (under 18, 18 to 64, and 65 and older) are noteworthy for distinct reasons. People under age 18 are typically dependent on other family members for income, particularly young children below their state's legal working age. People aged 18 to 64 are generally thought of as the working-age population and typically have wages and salaries as their greatest source of income. People aged 65 and older, referred to as the aged population, are often eligible for retirement, and those who do retire typically experience a change in their primary source of income, such as from earnings to Social Security.

As shown in Figure 3, poverty rose among children and the working-age population. Among children, 11.6 million (16.1%) lived in poverty in 2020, up from 10.5 million (14.4%) in 2019. Among the working-age population, 20.6 million (10.4%) lived in poverty in 2020, up from 18.9 million (9.4%) in 2019. The 65-and-older population experienced no significant change: 9.0% were below poverty in 2020.

Figure 3 illustrates poverty rates historically by age because the overall poverty rate (seen in Figure 1) masks the decline in poverty among the aged population. In earlier years, the poverty rate for those aged 65 and over was the highest of the three age groups. In 1966, people aged 65 and over had a poverty rate of 28.5%, compared with 17.6% for those under 18 and 10.5% for working-age adults. By 1974, the poverty rate for people aged 65 and over had fallen to 14.6%, compared with 15.4% for people under 18 and 8.3% for working-age adults. Since then, people under 18 have had the highest poverty rate of the three groups. Meanwhile, the poverty rate among the 65-and-older population eventually fell below the poverty rate of the working-age population, and has trended below that group since the mid-2000s.

Figure 3. Poverty Rates by Age: 1959 to 2020 (Poverty rates in percentages; shaded bars indicate recessions)

Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS), based on poverty data from Table B-5 of Emily A. Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports number P60-273, issued September 2021. Recession dates were obtained from the National Bureau of Economic Research at http://www2.nber.org/cycles/. Notes: The 2019 and 2020 estimates were biased downward because of increased nonresponse associated with telephone-only interviewing during the pandemic; for details, see the "Effect of the Pandemic on Survey Collection and Survey Estimates" section. Data are not available from 1960 to 1965 for persons aged 65 and older and for persons aged 18 to 64. Two estimates are shown for 2013 for each age group because the Census Bureau implemented a change to the CPS ASEC income questions. Some households received the old questionnaire and others the new, so that it would be possible to see the effect of changing the questionnaire. The CPS ASEC processing system was also updated for 2017. Those updates did not affect the overall poverty rate, nor the poverty rates for children or the population aged 18-64, though the 2017 poverty rate for the aged was 0.3 percentage points higher than under the legacy system. For details, see John Creamer and Ashley Edwards, Examining Poverty in 2016 and 2017 Using the Legacy and Updated Current Population Survey Processing System, U.S. Census Bureau, Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division, Working Paper #2019-28, July 30, 2019, https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/2019/demo/SEHSD-WP2019-28.html.

Race and Hispanic Origin¹⁷

Poverty rates vary by race and Hispanic origin, as shown in Figure 4. In surveys, Hispanic origin is asked about separately from race; accordingly, people identifying as Hispanic may be of any race. Comparing poverty rates in 2019 and 2020, among the White non-Hispanic population the poverty rate rose from 7.3% to 8.2%, and among the Hispanic population it rose from 15.7% to 17.0%. No statistical difference was observed among the Black population¹⁸ (19.5% in 2020) or the Asian population¹⁹ (8.1% in 2020).

Figure 4. Poverty Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin: 2020 (Poverty rates in percentages)

Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS), based on poverty data from Table B-1 of Emily A. Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports number P60-273, issued September 2021. Notes: People of Hispanic origin may be of any race. Additionally, respondents may identify with one or more racial groups. Except for "All persons" and "Hispanic," the remaining groups shown include those who identified with one race only. The "non-Hispanic White alone" group includes only the White non-Hispanic population, the "Black alone" group includes Blacks of Hispanic origin, and the "Asian alone" group includes Asians of Hispanic origin. Data for Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, American Indians and Alaska Natives, and the population of two or more races are not shown separately.

Work Status

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. Among the population aged 18 to 64 living in poverty, 36.8% had jobs in 2020. Poverty rates among workers in this age group were 5.0% for all workers (up from 4.7% in 2019), 1.6% for full-time year-round workers (down from 2.0% in 2019), and 11.3% for part-time or part-year workers (down from 12.0% in 2019). Among those who did not work at least one week in 2020, 28.8% were poor (up from 26.4% in 2019).

Because poverty is a family-based measure, a change in one member's work status can affect the poverty status of his or her entire family. Among all 18- to 64-year-olds who did not have jobs in 2020, 59.0% lived in families in which someone else did have a job.²⁰ Among 18- to 64-year-olds with income below the poverty line and without jobs, 19.6% lived in families where someone else worked.²¹

The COVID-19 pandemic and various responses to it, including shutdowns, affected workers. As a result, large shifts occurred in the work status categories when measured on an annual basis, and these shifts affected the poverty rates for these groups. The total number of people who worked full-time year-round fell as a result of some of the shutdowns: in 2019, 112.6 million people worked full-time year-round, while in 2020 this number was 99.4 million. Conversely, the number of people who worked, but not full-time year-round, rose from 42.0 million in 2019 to 52.8 million in 2020—a net increase of nearly 11 million workers. However, while many workers whose status was impacted by the shutdowns fell below poverty, many more did not. Unemployment insurance eligibility requirements were relaxed and benefit levels increased due to interventions such as the Family First Coronavirus Response Act and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, and an estimated 40 million people, or 16.0% of the population ages 18 and older, received unemployment insurance benefits.²² Furthermore, while many shutdowns lasted for weeks or months,²³ poverty status is computed using income over the entire year. As a result, while the number of persons working less than full-time year-round and living in poverty rose by nearly 1 million, the poverty rate for that same group fell (from 12.0% in 2019 to 11.3% in 2020).

Poverty Rates by State²⁴

Poverty is not equally prevalent in all parts of the country. Figure 5 shows states with relatively high poverty rates across parts of the Appalachians, the Southwest, and the Deep South. Mississippi's poverty rate (18.8%), seemingly the highest, was in a statistical tie with Louisiana's (17.4%—see footnote 3 for a discussion of statistical significance). The poverty rate in New Hampshire (5.3%), seemingly the lowest, was not statistically distinguishable from that in Utah (7.2%). When comparing poverty rates geographically, the official poverty thresholds are not adjusted for geographic variations in the cost of living—the same thresholds are used nationwide. As such, an area with a lower cost of living accompanied by lower wages will appear to have a higher poverty rate than an area with a higher cost of living and higher wages, even if individuals' purchasing power were exactly the same in both areas.

Figure 5. Three-Year Average State Poverty Rates: 2018-2020 (Poverty rates in percentages)

Source: Congressional Research Service, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2019-2021 Annual Social and Economic Supplements, "Interrelationships of Three Year Average State Poverty Rates: 2018–2020," supplementary table to accompany Emily A. Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports number P60-273, issued September 2021; see https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/p60/273/Interrelationships3yrAvg.xls. Notes: Data by state are based on three-year averages in order to reduce sampling error.

Sixteen states experienced statistically significant declines in their poverty rates, comparing their 2019-2020 average to their 2017-2018 average, and one experienced an increase. Among those that experienced decreases, three were in the Northeast (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey), four were in the Midwest (Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, and North Dakota), four were in the South (North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia), and five were in the West (Arizona, California, New Mexico, Washington, and Wyoming). Delaware, the only state with an increase, is in the South region. These decreases appear to run counter to the poverty rate increases discussed in earlier sections because these state estimates compare two consecutive two-year averages, while the national estimates discussed earlier compared 2019 with 2020 (see footnote 24).

Supplemental Poverty Measure

Criticisms of the official poverty measure led to the development of the SPM. Described below are the development of the official measure, its limitations, attempts to remedy those limitations, the research efforts that eventually led to the SPM's first release in November 2011, and a comparison of poverty rates in 2020 based on the SPM and the official measure.²⁵

How the Official Poverty Measure Was Developed

The poverty thresholds were originally developed in the early 1960s by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration. Rather than attempt to compute a family budget by using prices for all essential items that low-income families need to live, Orshansky focused on food costs.²⁶ Unlike other goods and services such as housing or transportation, which did not have a generally agreed-upon level of adequacy, minimum standards for nutrition were known and widely accepted. According to a 1955 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) food consumption survey, the average amount of their income that families spent on food was roughly one-third. Therefore, using the cost of a minimum food budget and multiplying that figure by three yielded a figure for total family income. That computation was possible because USDA had already published recommended food budgets as a way to address the nutritional needs of families experiencing economic stress. Some additional adjustments were made to derive poverty thresholds for two-person families and individuals not living in families to reflect the relatively higher fixed costs of smaller households.

Motivation for a Supplemental Measure

While the official poverty measure has been used for nearly 60 years as the source of official statistics on poverty in the United States, it has received criticism over the years for several reasons. First, it does not take into account benefits from most of the largest programs that aid the low-income population. For instance, it uses money income before taxes—meaning that it does not necessarily measure the income available for individuals to spend, which for most people is after-tax income. Therefore, any effects of tax credits designed to assist persons with low income are not captured by the official measure. The focus on money income also does not account for in-kind benefit programs designed to help the poor, such as SNAP or housing assistance.

The official measure has also been criticized for the way it characterizes families' and individuals' needs in the poverty thresholds. That is, the method used to compute the dollar amounts used in the thresholds, which were originally based on food expenditures in the 1950s and food costs in the 1960s, does not accurately reflect current needs and available goods and services.²⁷ The official measure also does not take account of the sharing of expenses and income among household members not related by birth, marriage, or adoption. And, as mentioned earlier, the official thresholds do not take account of geographic variations in the cost of living.

In 1995, a panel from the National Academy of Sciences issued a report, Measuring Poverty: A New Approach, which recommended improvements to the poverty measure.²⁸ Among the suggested improvements were to have the poverty thresholds reflect the costs of food, clothing, shelter, utilities, and a little bit extra to allow for miscellaneous needs; to broaden the definition of family; to include geographic adjustments as part of the measure's computation; to include the out-of-pocket costs of medical expenses in the measure's computation; and to subtract work-related expenses from income. An overarching goal of the recommendations was to make the poverty measure more closely aligned with the real-life needs and available resources of the low-income population, as well as the changes that have taken place over time in their circumstances, owing to changes in the nation's economy, society, and public policies (see Table 1).

After over a decade and a half of research to implement and refine the methodology suggested by the panel, conducted both from within the Census Bureau as well as by other federal agencies and the academic community, the Census Bureau issued the first report using the SPM in November 2011.²⁹

Official and Supplemental Poverty Findings for 2020³⁰

Compared with the official measure, the SPM takes into account greater detail of individuals' and families' living arrangements and provides a more up-to-date accounting of the costs and resources available to them. Because the SPM recognizes greater detail in relationships among household members and geographically adjusts housing costs, it provides an updated rendering, compared with the official measure, of the circumstances in which the poor live. In that context, some point out that the SPM's measurement of taxes, transfers, and expenses may offer policymakers a clearer view of how government policies affect the population living in poverty today. However, the SPM was developed as a research measure, and the Office of Management and Budget set the expectation that it would be revised periodically to incorporate improved measurement methods and newer sources of data as they became available; it was not developed for administrative purposes. The fact that tax liabilities and credits are modeled, or that in-kind benefits are estimated using limited data, can be useful to bear in mind when comparing SPM estimates with official poverty estimates, or when any changes to the SPM methodology become implemented in the future.³¹ Conversely, the official measure's consistency over a longer time span makes it easier for policymakers and researchers to make historical comparisons.

Under the SPM, the profile of the poverty population is slightly different than under the official measure. The SPM poverty rate was 2.3 percentage points lower in 2020 than the official poverty rate (9.1%, compared with 11.4%; see Figure 6).³²

This comparison is the opposite of what has been seen in previous years—before 2020, SPM poverty rates had been higher than official poverty rates. Two factors help to explain this reversal, and both highlight policy responses to the economic downturn in 2020. First, the SPM counts some resources that the official measure does not, such as refundable tax credits (which include stimulus payments).³³ Second, the SPM defines families differently from the official measure, and this can make cash payments like unemployment insurance—which are included in both measures—appear to have larger antipoverty effects in the SPM because more people in a family are counted as having received them.³⁴ The sharp increase in unemployment insurance payments in 2020, in response to layoffs related to the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighted how the SPM's family definition makes a difference in who gets classified as poor. Among the over 14 million persons classified as poor in 2020 under the SPM but not under official measure, approximately 2 million lived in families that received unemployment compensation according to the official definition of family, but 2.6 million received it according to the SPM's definition of family.³⁵ In the previous year (2019), fewer unemployment compensation payments were made, and the differences between the poverty measures in who received them were less stark: then, approximately 9.2 million were poor under the official measure but not the SPM, and of these, approximately 0.2 million lived in families that received unemployment compensation payments according to the official measure, while 0.3 million received them under the SPM's family definition.³⁶

Fewer people aged 18 to 64 were in poverty under the SPM (8.8%, compared with 10.4% under the official measure), as were people under age 18 (9.7%, compared with 16.0%, with foster children included). The poverty rate for people age 65 and older was higher under the SPM (9.5%) than under the official measure (9.0%).³⁷

As with the overall poverty rate, the results for working-age adults in 2020 run counter to the usual comparisons between the SPM and the official measure, again, likely due in large part to refundable tax credits, including stimulus payments.³⁸ Working-age adults usually have a higher SPM poverty rate than official poverty rate because the SPM deducts work expenses and child care expenses from income, but in 2020 the increase in refundable tax credits (including stimulus payments) made the SPM poverty rate lower for that group than under the official measure. Further, while children under 18 have consistently already had SPM poverty rates below the official rate (because refundable tax credits are often targeted to families with children), in 2020 the stimulus payments seem to have made this difference even more striking.³⁹

While geographically adjusted thresholds usually result in regional differences in how the SPM and official poverty rates compare, reflecting the differences in housing costs by region, that was not the case in 2020. The poverty rate in 2020 was lower under the SPM than under the official measure for all four major geographic regions of the country. In the Northeast, the SPM poverty rate was 8.5% compared with 10.1% under the official measure; for the Midwest, 6.7% compared with 10.1%; for the South, 10.1% compared with 13.3%; and in the West, 10.1% compared with 10.6%.

Figure 6. Poverty Rates Under Official Measure and Supplemental Poverty Measure for the United States, by Age and by Region: 2020 (Poverty rates in percentages)

Source: Congressional Research Service, based on data from Liana Fox and Kalee Burns, The Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2020, U.S. Census Bureau, September 2021, Appendix Table 2, at http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-275.pdf. Notes: Figures include unrelated individuals under age 15 (such as foster children), who are not usually included in official poverty estimates.