By Ahmed Aboulenein and Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. poverty rate edged down to the lowest on record in 2025, while median household income hit a record high, the Census Bureau said on Tuesday. There were 34.5 million people in poverty in 2025, the agency said.
The decline marked the second consecutive annual drop in the poverty rate and brought it to its lowest level since the bureau began tracking the measure. It came as policymakers debate the impact of federal spending cuts on safety-net programs.
The poverty rate — the percentage of people living in poverty — dipped 0.5 percentage point to 10.2% last year, the bureau said. The supplemental measure of poverty, which takes into account non-cash government benefits and taxes, was at 13.1%, and the median household income increased 2.6% to $87,460.
In 2025, a family with two adults and two children was classified as in poverty if their annual income was less than $32,649, the bureau said. The official poverty rate for children fell to a historic low of 13.4% in 2025.
Most people in the United States had health insurance for some or all of 2025, the bureau said, but 26.7 million people, or 7.9% of the population, did not have health coverage at any time.
This was not a significant change from the previous year, the bureau said, and the uninsured rate remained near historic lows.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Lucia Mutikani; Additional reporting by Katharine Jackson; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Xevi Fontgloria)
