The U.S. official poverty rate dropped to its lowest level on record in 2025 and median household income climbed to a record high, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, giving the White House a set of economic bragging points covering the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.
The official poverty rate fell half a percentage point to 10.2 percent last year, leaving 34.5 million Americans in poverty, according to the bureau’s data. It marked the second consecutive annual decline and the lowest reading since the agency began tracking the measure. Median household income, meanwhile, rose 2.6 percent to $87,460 — the highest figure on record going back to 1967.
A White House Victory Lap
The administration quickly seized on the numbers. In a statement, the White House said Trump’s “proven economic agenda delivered historic working-class prosperity in his first year back in office, with record-high real income and record-low poverty — breaking the records he set during his first term.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent touted the report while testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, describing the data as “several inconvenient facts” for the administration’s political opponents.
“Real wages are outpacing inflation,” Bessent said in his testimony. “The bottom 25 percent of wage earners are seeing larger wage increases than those at the top.”
Gains Across Demographic Groups
The report showed notable improvements for several demographic groups. The official poverty rate for children fell to a historic low of 13.4 percent, and the rate for Hispanic Americans dropped to a record low of 13.9 percent.
Median income gains were uneven across racial groups. Black households saw median income rise 4.8 percent between 2024 and 2025, while white households saw a 3.0 percent increase. Income for Asian and Hispanic households showed no statistically significant change over the same period.
The supplemental poverty measure — which factors in non-cash government benefits and taxes — held steady at 13.1 percent.
On health coverage, the bureau found that 26.7 million people, or 7.9 percent of the population, went without health insurance at some point in 2025. That rate was little changed from the prior year and remained near historic lows.
Democrats Push Back on Timing
Some Democrats argued the snapshot predates the effects of Republican spending reductions, noting that the 2025 data does not account for the Medicaid and food-stamp cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill, which Trump signed into law in July 2025.
Sharon Parrott, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, claimed the safety-net cuts would erase the progress reflected in the report, saying the reductions are “already taking food assistance and health care away from millions of people who need it, driving up poverty and hardship.”
The dispute over the report’s shelf life — whether it captures a peak before looming policy changes take effect or a durable trend — is likely to shape the political battle over the economy heading into the next election cycle. For now, the Census Bureau’s numbers stand as the official scorecard for 2025, and they show poverty at the lowest point the government has ever recorded.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2026/09/16/census-u-s-poverty-rate-hits-lowest-on-record-as-incomes-set-new-high/