Poverty Rate by State 2026: Latest Census SPM Ranking

What the Census state poverty ranking measures

The Supplemental Poverty Measure compares a family's or individual's available resources with an SPM threshold. Resources include cash income and qualifying noncash benefits and tax credits, then subtract taxes and necessary expenses such as medical out-of-pocket, work and child-care costs.

SPM thresholds also account for geographic housing-cost differences and whether a household rents, owns with a mortgage or owns without a mortgage. That is why an SPM state ranking can differ materially from a conventional Official Poverty Measure ranking.

The national three-year SPM rate for 2023–2025 was 13.0%. Thirteen states have published SPM point estimates above 13.0%, but Census statistical testing identifies only eight states as significantly above the national SPM rate.

How the official poverty measure differs

Census also reports an official-plus measure for direct comparison with SPM. Official-plus uses the official poverty methodology but includes unrelated individuals under age 15 so that its population universe aligns with SPM.

For 2023–2025, the national official-plus rate was 10.7%. Census highlights Louisiana at 19.6% and Mississippi at 17.6% among the highest official-plus state rates, while New Hampshire had the lowest at 5.4%.

Census identifies 11 states with official-plus poverty rates statistically above the 10.7% national benchmark: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia. Unverified row-level official-plus values are not inferred for the remaining states.

Top 10 states by Supplemental Poverty Measure rate

Louisiana leads the latest complete state SPM ranking at 19.0%. California is second at 17.8%, Mississippi third at 16.8% and Florida fourth at 16.4%. Equal published Census point estimates share a rank.

States through rank 20: 22 states because of a three-way tie

Rank 20 is shared by Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee at 11.1%. The chart therefore includes all 22 states through the rank-20 cutoff instead of arbitrarily excluding states with the same published Census point estimate.

Methodology

StatRanker-calculated metrics use the 50 confirmed Census state point estimates. Unweighted mean = 565.3 ÷ 50 = 11.306%, displayed as 11.31%. Median = (10.8% + 10.7%) ÷ 2 = 10.75%. High-low gap = 19.0% − 6.4% = 12.6 percentage points. High-low ratio = 19.0 ÷ 6.4 = 2.97.

These calculations are descriptive StatRanker calculations and are not Census-published national estimates. The official national three-year SPM rate is 13.0%, which reflects population weighting and should not be replaced by the unweighted average of state rates.

Census recommends three-year CPS ASEC averages for state analysis because individual-year state samples are smaller. Statistical uncertainty remains: differences between neighboring state point estimates do not necessarily indicate statistically significant differences.

No calculated_value, official_forecast or modeled_projection is used in the ranking. The page does not estimate 2026 state poverty rates and does not combine values from different years, surveys or poverty measures.

SPM does not measure wealth, assets or every form of material hardship. It also must not be interpreted as the same metric as the Official Poverty Measure or the standard ACS poverty rate.

All 50 states ranked by latest Census SPM poverty rate

Every row below uses U.S. Census Bureau Table 17, the 2023–2025 three-year period and official_value status. Equal published values share a rank. Selecting “Top 20 cutoff” can therefore display more than 20 states when several states share rank 20.

Key findings from the latest state poverty data

What the ranking means

This ranking answers a specific question: which states have the highest and lowest poverty rates when poverty is measured with the Census Supplemental Poverty Measure. It should not be interpreted as a ranking of ACS poverty rates or as a synthetic estimate of poverty in calendar year 2026.

Census found SPM significantly higher than official-plus poverty in 26 states and the District of Columbia, significantly lower in five states and not statistically different in the remaining 19 states. That difference is why the measures are kept separate here.

Ranking positions are based on Census-published point estimates. States separated by small differences may not be statistically distinguishable, and equal published values receive the same rank.

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