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California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina: For the fourth consecutive year between 2012 and 2017, these five states had a decline in poverty rates according to the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by the United States Census Bureau. The ACS is an ongoing survey that generates vital data including information helping to determine how more than $675 billion in federal and state funds are distributed.
From this survey, we can gain a larger picture of poverty in America. The overall picture of poverty in the U.S. shows that poverty fell in some capacity in 42 states but increased in two: Delaware and West Virginia.
Over the 2016-2017 year, poverty rates declined in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Additionally, in the five year period between 2012-2017, poverty declined in eight out of the ten most populous states while in six states: CA, Texas, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, poverty declined in four out of the five years between 2012 and 2017. The survey concluded that no state saw a decline over all five years.
Coincidentally, there has been a poverty decline for the women homeowners—a 13.1 percent decrease from 2015 to 2016. However, in our annual 2018 Women in the Housing Ecosystem (WHER) Report we cite 2016 U.S. Census Bureau data showing that 26.6 percent of families with a single female householder, with no husband present, are below the poverty level rate—twice the poverty rate of single male householders with no wife present.
Female householders have 42.1 percent of the children under 18 years old in poverty and 49.1 percent of the children under 6 years of age in poverty. Women, householders make up 51.2 percent of all families below the poverty line.
Hopefully, the overall national pattern of decline in poverty rates will reach more women as a subpopulation in the years to come.