In 2024, 35.9 million people in the US lived in poverty, lacking enough income to cover basic needs like food, housing, and healthcare. That’s equal to 10.6% of the nation’s population. But the national percentage is just the starting point. We’ve just added poverty data for every state and over 3,000 counties. Let’s look at the numbers.

• The rate has generally trended downward since its first official measurement in 1959. The most recent data shows the number of people in poverty fell 4.2% from the 2014 peak of 46.7 million.
   

• State-level poverty rates ranged from 18.7% in Louisiana to 7.2% in New Hampshire. Other high rates were in Mississippi (17.8%), Washington, DC (17.3%), West Virginia (16.7%), and New Mexico (16.4%).

• The child poverty rate fell faster than older groups, but children still have a higher poverty rate than the adults measured. The rate for people younger than 18 fell from 15.3% to 14.3% between 2023 and 2024, while the rate for adults under 65 dropped from 10% to 9.6%. The rate for adults over 65 rose slightly from 9.7% to 9.9%.
   

• Single-parent families, married couples, and people living alone all have varying economic circumstances. In 2024, 21.8% of families led by a female householder with no spouse present lived in poverty, compared to 4.6% of married-couple families.
   

• American Indian and Alaska Native people had the highest rate among racial or ethnic groups in 2024 at 19.3%. Asian people had the lowest rate: 7.5%.
   

• The Department of Health and Human Services uses Census Bureau data to calculate and issue annual federal poverty levels. These set the income limits used to determine eligibility for programs such as Medicaid and CHIP. Steve Ballmer has even more on this topic and the means-tested programs related to poverty levels in this video.

Cost prevents people from getting medical treatment

Federal Reserve data shows that many American adults delay or skip treatment because they can't afford it. Last year, 26% of adults skipped some form of medical treatment due to cost, compared with 28% in 2024. Here’s what people most commonly skip.

• What did people skip the most? The dentist. Costs kept 18% of adults from receiving dental care, followed by doctor visits (15%), follow-up care (10%), mental health care or counseling (10%), and prescriptions (9%).
   

• Among adults with family incomes under $25,000, 38% skipped at least one treatment. The same was true for 13% of adults earning over $100,000.
   

• Health insurance also makes a substantial difference. Last year, 45% of uninsured adults skipped medical care due to cost, compared to 24% of insured adults.
   

• In 2024, 27.5 million people — 8.2% of the population — lacked health insurance. Adults 65 and older were most likely to have coverage: only 0.8% lacked health insurance. But among adults ages 19 to 64, 11.3% aren't insured, along with 6.0% of Americans under 19.
   

• Out-of-pocket costs can push uninsured adults into debt. In 2025, 21% of adults had an unexpected medical expense, with the median being between $1,000 and $1,999. Eighteen percent of people reported carrying debt from their own or a family member’s medical care.

President Trump has nominated the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, to fill the role officially and lead the Justice Department.

President Trump recently signed a budget reconciliation bill with $70 billion in funds for immigration enforcement. Here’s how reconciliation bills fit into the congressional budget process.

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Friday is Juneteenth, a federal holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois, a pioneer in many ways, was also a pioneer in data visualization. He documented Black life in America in the generations after slavery, and he presented hand-drawn charts on the topic at the 1900 Paris Exposition. See them here.