In 2024, approximately 10.6 percent of the population was living below the national poverty line in the United States. This reflected a 0.5 percentage point decrease from the previous year. Most recently, poverty levels in the country peaked in 2010 at just over 15 percent. Poverty in the U.S. States The number of people living in poverty in the U.S. as well as poverty rates, vary greatly from state to state. With their large populations, California and Texas led that charts in terms of the size of their impoverished residents. On the other hand, Louisiana had the highest rates of poverty, standing at 20 percent in 2024. The state with the lowest poverty rate was New Hampshire at 5.9 percent. Vulnerable populations The poverty rate in the United States varies widely across different ethnic groups. American Indians and Alaska Natives are the ethnic group with the highest levels of poverty in 2024, with about 19 percent earning an income below the official threshold. In comparison, only about 7.5 percent of the White (non-Hispanic) and Asian populations were living below the poverty line. Children are one of the most poverty endangered population groups in the U.S. between 1990 and 2024. Child poverty peaked in 1993 with 22.7 percent of children living in poverty. Despite fluctuations, in 2024, poverty among minors reached its lowest level in decades, falling to 14.3 percent.

The census tract data was obtained for the state of Texas from the Census Bureau's TIGER/Line files and clipped to City of Dallas boundaries. Table S1701 (Poverty Status in the Past 12 Months) was pulled from American Factfinder for all tracts in the state of Texas and joined to the clipped tract file. Only the individual poverty rate was kept for the purposes of this feature.Fields:GEOID; String; This unique identifier allows census data to be joined to the featureNAME; String; This is a short tract identifierPovRate; Double; This is the poverty rate for the given census tract

This dataset includes 2000 Census SF3 poverty status by tract. For more information, see DATAFILE STRUCTURE SF30031.pdf

DeprecatedUpdated for PY-2023 (effective March 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024). Deprecated October 1, 2024.What does the data represent?These are named polygons that follow block group boundaries that contain 51% or greater low-to-moderate income persons as published by HUD from 2011-2015 ACS data. That data has been superseded by data developed from 2016-2020 ACS data by HUD and published at https://services.arcgis.com/VTyQ9soqVukalItT/ArcGIS/rest/services/LMISD_layers/FeatureServer/4. Target areas primarily served residential areas, and each target area ideally could self-identify as the named community.Where were they located?Target Areas of Harris County fit within the Harris County Service Area, which was the unincorporated land of Harris County, Texas plus then-cooperative cities. Any portions of otherwise qualified block groups that extended into non-service area were excluded from the target area. This prevented “double-dipping” community development resource entitlements.How accurate are they?Block group boundaries in Harris County follow visual cues such as roadways and streams. Census Bureau linework attempts to delineate these bounding features but they are seldom more accurate than within thirty feet of ground truth.Full-service city boundaries determine whether an incorporated area is within the Harris County Service Area or the non-service area. These are updated roughly quarterly in the Harris County GIS Repository layer managed by the Harris County Appraisal District. Target areas have been updated each year using this data from the late autumn to the end of each calendar year.When were they collected?When HCCSD updated the Service Area and Target Areas of Harris County in the latter part of each Program Year, it uses the current HUD LMISD dataset and HCAD full-service city boundaries to perform the update. HUD publishes an updated LMISD dataset every year, but the data HUD analyzes to create these updates only changes when an additional five-year period of American Community Survey data has accumulated. Therefore the survey data reported in the HUD LMISD were collected from 4 to 8 years prior (PY2019) to as much as 9 to 13 years prior to publishing the results (PY2023). Unless a local income survey was conducted more recently between one and four years ago, each Program Year’s target area boundaries reflect LMISD block group information collected at least four to as much as thirteen years ago.Who collected them?Harris County Community Services Department (HCCSD) collected and Harris County Housing & Community Development (HCHCD) maintains Harris County Service Area and Target Area information. As representative of one of the largest urban counties in the U.S. and the largest in Texas, the Highest Elected Official in Harris County has delegated HCHCD to implement HUD-assisted community development activities on unincorporated land and on behalf of the cooperative cities. Cooperative cities are generally those of insufficient size to become entitled to HUD funds on their own, i.e. less than 50,000 population. Through 9/30/2024 Harris County maintained agreements with 12 cooperative cities, including: Deer Park, Galena Park, Humble, Jacinto City, Katy, La Porte, Morgan's Point, Seabrook, Shoreacres, South Houston, Tomball, and Webster in PY2023. Tomball ended its agreement 9/30/2024, thereafter becoming part of the non-service area.