The Census Bureau’s new annual report on poverty found that 44 million Americans lived in poverty last year, including 10 million children. As a percentage of the population, overall poverty stayed the same from 2023 to 2024 (12.9%), while child poverty fell slightly (from 13.7% to 13.4%).
As a matter of historical record, the new data establishes that both poverty and child poverty increased under the Biden administration (2021–24). By how much depends on what year you compare 2024’s levels with. The final year before Joe Biden took office was 2020, while 2019 reflects the pre-pandemic standard Biden promised to improve upon: “It is not enough to restore where we were prior to the pandemic. We need to build a stronger economy that does not leave anyone behind — we need to build back better,” the White House stated in early 2021.
If you choose 2019 as your point of comparison, the increase in poverty under Biden is bad. If you choose 2020, it’s catastrophic.
- Change, 2019–24:
- Poverty: 9.3% increase (+5.4 million people)
- Child poverty: 6.3% increase (+491,000 children)
- Change, 2020–24:
- Poverty: 40.2% increase (+13.7 million people)
- Child poverty: 38.1% increase (+2.5 million children)
I’ve included a chart for each data range below. Why the second one looks so much worse: There was a historic drop in poverty during the final year of Donald Trump’s first term. This was because in 2020, the US government spent money on public health and social welfare like it typically only does for wars: massive new investments enacted quickly, without the endless debates on how to pay for them (no US war since Vietnam has been paid for by a corresponding tax increase; they’ve all been funded through the deficit). This included…
Auteur: Stephen Semler
