According to a new U.S. Census Bureau report, the official poverty rate decreased 0.5 percentage points from 12.3 percent to 11.8 percent between 2017 and 2018. A large proportion of this decline is attributed to a drop in the poverty rate of female-householder families with no spouse present, which dropped by 1.7 percentage points to 26.8 percent. The poverty rate for this group is at the lowest on record. The previous low poverty rate for these families was 28.5 percent in both 2000 and 2017.

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