Monthly Poverty Data

The Center on Poverty and Social Policy is tracking monthly poverty rates throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Our monthly version of the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) looks at family income and resources available during the given month, providing close to real-time estimates of the economic well-being of U.S. households. Our estimates include all taxes and transfers and accounts for introductions and expirations of federal pandemic relief efforts. As such, we are able to directly measure the volatility of poverty throughout the year and the role of government transfers in reducing economic insecurity. Full details on our methods can be found in Parolin, Curran, Matsudaira, Waldfogel, and Wimer (2022). Starting in 2024, we introduced changes in our methodology to enhance the conceptual soundness of our estimates. We provide a series of monthly poverty estimates from 2020-2023 with the new changes applied to ensure consistent comparability with those from 2024. Full details on our update in methodology from 2024 can be found in Curran, Lee, and Parolin (2024). Monthly poverty rates are updated through February 2024.

We also track monthly poverty rates by race and ethnicity and by age, including all taxes and transfers. To download poverty estimates directly for each demographic group, click the "get the data" link available under each figure. To download our full set of monthly poverty data, click here.