section_path: Income and wealth/Poverty
section_name: Poverty
paragraph_text: Poverty
  
  Starting in the 1980s relative poverty rates have consistently exceeded those of other wealthy nations, though analyses using a common data set for comparisons tend to find that the U.S. has a lower absolute poverty rate by market income than most other wealthy nations. Extreme poverty in the United States, meaning households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits, doubled from 1996 levels to 1.5 million households in 2011, including 2.8 million children. In 2013, child poverty reached record high levels, with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels. As of 2015, 44 percent of children in the United States live with low-income families.
  
  In 2016, 12.7% of the U.S. population lived in poverty, down from 13.5% in 2015. The poverty rate rose from 12.5% in 2007 before the Great Recession to a 15.1% peak in 2010, before falling back to just above the 2007 level. In the 1959–1962 period, the poverty rate was over 20%, but declined to the all-time low of 11.1% in 1973 following the War on Poverty begun during the Lyndon Johnson presidency. In June 2016, The IMF warned the United States that its high poverty rate needs to be tackled urgently.
  
  The population in extreme-poverty neighborhoods rose by one third from 2000 to 2009. People living in such neighborhoods tend to suffer from inadequate access to quality education; higher crime rates; higher rates of physical and psychological ailment; limited access to credit and wealth accumulation; higher prices for goods and services; and constrained access to job opportunities. As of 2013, 44% of America's poor are considered to be in "deep poverty", with an income 50% or more below the government's official poverty line.
  
  According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development 's Annual Homeless Assessment Report, as of 2024 there were around 771,480 homeless people in the United States on a given night, or about 23 of every 10,000 people. Almost two thirds stayed in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program and the other third were living on the street, in an abandoned building, or another place not meant for human habitation. About 1.56 million people, or about 0.5% of the U.S. population, used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program between October 1, 2008, and September 30, 2009. Around 44% of homeless people are employed. Homelessness increased from 2016 to 2020, along with deaths among the homeless population.
  
  The United States has one of the least extensive social safety nets in the developed world, reducing both relative poverty and absolute poverty by considerably less than the mean for wealthy nations. Some experts posit that those in poverty live in conditions rivaling the developing world. A May 2018 report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights found that over five million people in the United States live "in 'Third World' conditions". Poverty is the fourth leading risk factor for premature death annually, according to a 2023 study published in JAMA. Over the last three decades the poor in America have been incarcerated at a much higher rate than their counterparts in other developed nations, with penal confinement being "commonplace for poor men of working age". Some scholars contend that the shift to neoliberal social and economic policies starting in the late 1970s has expanded the penal state, retrenched the social welfare state, deregulated the economy and criminalized poverty, ultimately "transforming what it means to be poor in America".
  
  Sociologist Matthew Desmond writes in his 2023 book Poverty, by America that the US "offers some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world," which has "swelled the ranks of the working poor, most of whom are thirty-five or older." Social scientist Mark Robert Rank asserts that the high rates of poverty in the U.S. can largely be explained as structural failures at the economic and political levels.
  
  Starting in the 1980s relative poverty rates have consistently exceeded those of other wealthy nations, though analyses using a common data set for comparisons tend to find that the U.S. has a lower absolute poverty rate by market income than most other wealthy nations. Extreme poverty in the United States, meaning households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits, doubled from 1996 levels to 1.5 million households in 2011, including 2.8 million children. In 2013, child poverty reached record high levels, with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels. As of 2015, 44 percent of children in the United States live with low-income families.
  
  In 2016, 12.7% of the U.S. population lived in poverty, down from 13.5% in 2015. The poverty rate rose from 12.5% in 2007 before the Great Recession to a 15.1% peak in 2010, before falling back to just above the 2007 level. In the 1959–1962 period, the poverty rate was over 20%, but declined to the all-time low of 11.1% in 1973 following the War on Poverty begun during the Lyndon Johnson presidency. In June 2016, The IMF warned the United States that its high poverty rate needs to be tackled urgently.
  
  The population in extreme-poverty neighborhoods rose by one third from 2000 to 2009. People living in such neighborhoods tend to suffer from inadequate access to quality education; higher crime rates; higher rates of physical and psychological ailment; limited access to credit and wealth accumulation; higher prices for goods and services; and constrained access to job opportunities. As of 2013, 44% of America's poor are considered to be in "deep poverty", with an income 50% or more below the government's official poverty line.
  
  According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development 's Annual Homeless Assessment Report, as of 2024 there were around 771,480 homeless people in the United States on a given night, or about 23 of every 10,000 people. Almost two thirds stayed in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program and the other third were living on the street, in an abandoned building, or another place not meant for human habitation. About 1.56 million people, or about 0.5% of the U.S. population, used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program between October 1, 2008, and September 30, 2009. Around 44% of homeless people are employed. Homelessness increased from 2016 to 2020, along with deaths among the homeless population.
  
  The United States has one of the least extensive social safety nets in the developed world, reducing both relative poverty and absolute poverty by considerably less than the mean for wealthy nations. Some experts posit that those in poverty live in conditions rivaling the developing world. A May 2018 report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights found that over five million people in the United States live "in 'Third World' conditions". Poverty is the fourth leading risk factor for premature death annually, according to a 2023 study published in JAMA. Over the last three decades the poor in America have been incarcerated at a much higher rate than their counterparts in other developed nations, with penal confinement being "commonplace for poor men of working age". Some scholars contend that the shift to neoliberal social and economic policies starting in the late 1970s has expanded the penal state, retrenched the social welfare state, deregulated the economy and criminalized poverty, ultimately "transforming what it means to be poor in America".
  
  Sociologist Matthew Desmond writes in his 2023 book Poverty, by America that the US "offers some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world," which has "swelled the ranks of the working poor, most of whom are thirty-five or older." Social scientist Mark Robert Rank asserts that the high rates of poverty in the U.S. can largely be explained as structural failures at the economic and political levels.
  
  Starting in the 1980s relative poverty rates have consistently exceeded those of other wealthy nations, though analyses using a common data set for comparisons tend to find that the U.S. has a lower absolute poverty rate by market income than most other wealthy nations. Extreme poverty in the United States, meaning households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits, doubled from 1996 levels to 1.5 million households in 2011, including 2.8 million children. In 2013, child poverty reached record high levels, with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels. As of 2015, 44 percent of children in the United States live with low-income families.
  
  In 2016, 12.7% of the U.S. population lived in poverty, down from 13.5% in 2015. The poverty rate rose from 12.5% in 2007 before the Great Recession to a 15.1% peak in 2010, before falling back to just above the 2007 level. In the 1959–1962 period, the poverty rate was over 20%, but declined to the all-time low of 11.1% in 1973 following the War on Poverty begun during the Lyndon Johnson presidency. In June 2016, The IMF warned the United States that its high poverty rate needs to be tackled urgently.
  
  The population in extreme-poverty neighborhoods rose by one third from 2000 to 2009. People living in such neighborhoods tend to suffer from inadequate access to quality education; higher crime rates; higher rates of physical and psychological ailment; limited access to credit and wealth accumulation; higher prices for goods and services; and constrained access to job opportunities. As of 2013, 44% of America's poor are considered to be in "deep poverty", with an income 50% or more below the government's official poverty line.
  
  According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development 's Annual Homeless Assessment Report, as of 2024 there were around 771,480 homeless people in the United States on a given night, or about 23 of every 10,000 people. Almost two thirds stayed in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program and the other third were living on the street, in an abandoned building, or another place not meant for human habitation. About 1.56 million people, or about 0.5% of the U.S. population, used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program between October 1, 2008, and September 30, 2009. Around 44% of homeless people are employed. Homelessness increased from 2016 to 2020, along with deaths among the homeless population.
  
  The United States has one of the least extensive social safety nets in the developed world, reducing both relative poverty and absolute poverty by considerably less than the mean for wealthy nations. Some experts posit that those in poverty live in conditions rivaling the developing world. A May 2018 report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights found that over five million people in the United States live "in 'Third World' conditions". Poverty is the fourth leading risk factor for premature death annually, according to a 2023 study published in JAMA. Over the last three decades the poor in America have been incarcerated at a much higher rate than their counterparts in other developed nations, with penal confinement being "commonplace for poor men of working age". Some scholars contend that the shift to neoliberal social and economic policies starting in the late 1970s has expanded the penal state, retrenched the social welfare state, deregulated the economy and criminalized poverty, ultimately "transforming what it means to be poor in America".
  
  Sociologist Matthew Desmond writes in his 2023 book Poverty, by America that the US "offers some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world," which has "swelled the ranks of the working poor, most of whom are thirty-five or older." Social scientist Mark Robert Rank asserts that the high rates of poverty in the U.S. can largely be explained as structural failures at the economic and political levels.