An official website of the United States government
Here’s how you know
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
The poverty rate is an economic indicator that measures the percentage of people with income below the poverty threshold. Federal and state governments use these estimates in funding formulas to allocate funds to local communities. Local communities often use these estimates to identify the number of individuals or families eligible for various programs.
This report uses data from the 2000 to 2012 American Community Surveys (ACS) to examine trends in poverty rates for the nation, states, and the District of Columbia.1 The report also analyzes the distribution of people by income-to-poverty ratios for the nation, states, and the District of Columbia over this period. In addition, this report discusses the current poverty rates for metropolitan statistical areas with large populations.
The estimates contained in this report are based on the 2000 to 2012 ACS. Since 2005, the ACS has been conducted every month with income data collected for the 12 months preceding the interview. Since the survey is continuous, adjacent ACS years have some income reference months in common. Therefore, comparing the 2011 ACS with the 2012 ACS is not an exact comparison of the economic conditions in 2011 with those in 2012 and comparisons should be interpreted with care.3 For more information on the ACS sample design and other topics, visit <www.census.gov/acs/www>.
__________
1 The data for 2000 were obtained from the Census 2000 Supplementary Survey (C2SS), which was the demonstration stage of the ACS. The C2SS was designed to provide accurate estimates for housing units and the population for the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on a sample of approximately 890,000 housing units. This sample did not include people in group quarters. In this report, the C2SS is referred as the 2000 ACS. For more information on the accuracy of the data see <www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/accuracy/accuracy00_C2SS.pdf>.
2 Following the standard specified by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in Statistical Policy Directive 14, data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) are used to estimate the official national poverty rate. For more information, see notes at the end of this report.
3 For a discussion of this and related issues, see Hogan, Howard, “Measuring Population Change Using the American Community Survey,” Applied Demography in the 21st Century, eds. Steven H. Murdock and David A. Swanson, Springer Netherlands, 2008.
Share
Related Information
Some content on this site is available in several different electronic formats. Some of the files may require a plug-in or additional software to view.
Top