Poverty hits a record low

Every weather report gives two numbers. One is the temperature, read off a thermometer the same way every day. The other is the "feels like" number, which adds in the wind, the humidity and the sun. Both are honest, and they answer different questions.

The official poverty rate is the thermometer reading. Census has taken it the same way every year since 1959, comparing a family's pretax cash income with a line that moves only with inflation; for two parents and two children in 2025, that line was $32,649. On September 15 Census reported the 2025 reading: 10.2%, down half a point from the year before and the lowest since the measure began.

The children's reading is better still. Child poverty fell to 13.4%, from 14.4% a year earlier, the lowest Census has ever recorded. Poverty among Hispanic Americans fell to a record-low 13.9%. Among people who worked full time all year, only 1.6% were poor.

That still leaves 34.5 million Americans below the line, and nobody should call the job finished. The direction, though, is unmistakable.

The "feels like" number

Census also publishes a second reading, the Supplemental Poverty Measure. It is the "feels like" number: it counts help such as food assistance and tax credits, and it subtracts costs such as taxes and medical bills. By that measure 13.1% of Americans were poor in 2025, statistically unchanged from 2024.

That second number is where the pushback starts. Steven Durlauf, a University of Chicago poverty scholar, told the Associated Press that calling these the best poverty numbers in history is "factually correct, but it's a misleading characterization of the state of poverty." He has a point. The supplemental rate hit its own low of 7.7% in 2021, while a temporary expansion of the child tax credit was in effect.

But look at what made that 2021 reading. It was a warm front from the expanded child tax credit, and warm fronts pass: the credit ended in December 2021, and the supplemental rate climbed back above the official one. The 2025 readings did not lean on a pandemic-era emergency program; the official rate set a record, and the "feels like" number held steady. That is what better weather looks like when it comes from income instead of a program that runs out.

This year's survey does not yet reflect the reductions to food and health programs in the 2025 tax law; next September's report will show whether families stayed ahead. For 2025, though, the thermometer gave American children the lowest poverty reading ever taken. When the next report comes out, check both numbers, the way you would before sending the kids out the door.