Free Interactive Report
Poverty in the US
By 2030, UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1, No Poverty, aims to eradicate extreme poverty and reduce the proportion of people living below a country’s national poverty line by at least half. This includes increasing access to decent wages, health insurance, retirement programs, and other social services, as well as basic services like drinking water and electricity. It also requires addressing the negative economic impacts of natural disasters and other emergencies to prevent more people from falling into poverty.
As of 2019, over 39 million people live below the poverty line in the US, or less than $35 per day, including nearly 11 million children(1 in 7 kids).
Over 1% (3.9 million people) qualify under the global extreme poverty threshold of $1.90 per day. Poverty in the U.S. can be linked with a range of other issues, including affordable housing, food insecurity, childcare, health care, and education.
Use the tool below to view poverty-related indicators nationally or by state, as well as an overview of the more than 77,800 nonprofits organizations that work on addressing related issues in the US. You can also discover 130 products and services in our Tech for Good Directory addressing homelessness, food insecurity, and other key areas of poverty alleviation.
Poverty
experiencing
homelessness
homeless
individuals that are
young adults 18-24
homeless
individuals that
are veterans
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Interactive charts sources:
- Homelessness: United States Interagency Council on Homelessness – 2020
- Poverty: GC Insights analysis of U.S. Census Bureau
- Nonprofit-related data: GC Insights analysis of over 600,000 forms 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service -IRS 2018-2020
Other Sources:
- Our World In Data – Distribution of population between different poverty thresholds, United States 1986 to 2016
- Our World In Data – Share of the population living in extreme poverty, 1979 to 2016
- SDG Tracker – No Poverty
- World Bank – Development Indicators
- Urban Institute – 2020 Poverty Projections
- Poor Peoples Campaign – Costs of Poverty Fact Sheet
- UC Berkeley Labor Center – The High Public Cost of Low Wages
- American Progress – The Basic Facts About Children in Poverty
- New York Times – U.S. Poverty Fell Last Year as Government Aid Made Up for Lost Jobs
- Human Rights Watch – United States: Pandemic Impact on People in Poverty
- Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies – State of the Nation’s Housing Report