By Karen Dolan
The U.S. Census has just released its annual data on poverty, income, and health insurance for 2024, so it doesn’t include the projected devastating effects on states, families, and communities from the Republican mega budget bill, which finances huge tax cuts for the uber-wealthy by slashing critical investments in everyday families and communities.
It shows not statistically different numbers in real median income ($83,730), poverty as measured by the more accurate metric, the Supplemental Poverty Measure (12.9 percent), the number of people who are uninsured (8 percent), or income inequality from 2023.
This continues the trend of disappointing numbers since the successes of 2021 in reducing childhood and overall poverty.
However, the one exception was real median income at the top of the income ladder – the top 90th percentile saw a 4.2 percent increase while the 10th and 50th income brackets did not. Asian households saw a 5.1 percent increase, and Hispanic households saw a 5.5 percent increase.
However, for Black Americans, there was a decrease in real median income of 3.3 percent, an increase in supplemental poverty of 2.2 percent, and a decrease in health insurance coverage.
For the second consecutive year, the gender pay gap increased. Men working full-time year-round saw a gain of 3.7 percent in median earnings, while women saw none, creating a gender pay gap of 80.9 percent, down from 82.7 percent in 2023.
Although these disappointing numbers don’t reflect the massive cuts to social programs that occurred in 2025 and are slated to hit families over the coming years, they do tell us important stories about trends and policy decisions.
They build on the last several years of data that demonstrate how effective policy achieves positive outcomes to reduce poverty by shoring up the safety net families and communities rely on, and how bad policies produce the opposite.
The data remains solid: During the COVID-19 pandemic and its immediate aftermath, good policies were enacted that cut the child poverty rate in half, reduced overall poverty, made progress in closing racial gaps in poverty, improved incomes across the board, and greatly increased the number of people with health insurance.
As Congress failed to renew and build on these excellent policies, child poverty spiked 163 percent from 2021 to 2023, with child poverty for 2024 not statistically different at a rate of 13.4 percent, and overall poverty increased, housing and food insecurity spiked.
The number of people with health insurance wobbled–stopped increasing for adults and decreased for children– as Medicaid began “unwinding”–meaning they no longer allowed people the freedom to stay on Medicaid for longer periods of time without overly burdensome paperwork.
But also, the numbers were bolstered by the pandemic-era enhanced premium tax credits for those in the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. Those tax credits are set to expire on December 31 unless Congress acts to renew them.
The conservative majority in Congress continues to push hard-working American families, seniors, women, and children deeper into economic hardship as they have failed to learn the lessons of good policies enacted in 2021.
Even worse, their destructive megabill that stole from the rest of us to give massive tax giveaways to the nation’s richest will cause millions to lose Medicaid, drive up health coverage premiums for everyone else, and shove families off of food assistance.
The massive taxes on the rest of us from Trump’s tariffs, mass deportations, constricting economy, and job market will shrink household incomes and drive more people into poverty and hardship.
States will struggle to make up the difference, with state budgets and services also shrinking.
Social Security remains a bright spot, lifting 28.7 million people out of poverty, as do refundable tax credits that kept 6.8 million people out of poverty, although the Child Tax Credit increased only for middle and upper-income families, leaving behind 17 million children in families too poor to qualify for that credit or the full credit.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, aka “food stamps”) continues to have a positive multiplier effect on the economy, bringing $1.54 into a slowing economy for every dollar spent, but this positive impact will diminish as the cuts to SNAP in the GOP megabill take effect.
The conservative majority of lawmakers remains unable to learn from success, thus condemning all but the wealthiest of us to preventable loss.