Lucio Vasquez / Houston Public Media
Houston has a higher percentage of residents living in poverty among the largest cities in the United States, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
One out of five residents — approximately 21.2% — are living at or below the poverty line in Houston, according to the report published Thursday. That surpasses Philadelphia, which, now at 19.7%, had previously held the title of most impoverished city in America.
“We’ve been noticing this for the past year,” Maria Perez Arguelles, a research assistant professor with the University of Houston, said. “We saw this coming. And also, there are many factors that affect this, like that Houston is a very young city with a growing population, so things are constantly changing. So, the dynamics, and the policies, and the economic conditions also change, but at a more slower pace than the population growth that Houston is experiencing.”
Of all the top 25 cities in the United States, Houston has the highest percentage of impoverished residents, according to the report. Detroit, the twenty-sixth largest city, has a higher poverty rate at 34.5%, according to the data.
“Houston is one of America’s fastest growing cities, and growth — rapid growth — will be a double-edged sword,” Agustin Vallejo, a research assistant professor at the University of Houston, said. “So, what growth does is it polarizes the job market. It creates, on one side, a low-wage service work, and on the other hand higher productivity sectors. And that increases not poverty but inequalities in a society.”
Those figures, which can be analyzed on the U.S. Census Bureau’s website, reflect the most recent data from 2024. Overall, about 12.1% of American families are living at or below the poverty line.
While the United States’ poverty rate declined marginally year over year by 0.4 percentage points, Houston’s increased by 1.7 points. Other major Texas cities — like Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin — all experienced a marginal decrease in their poverty rate, while El Paso increased by 0.3 percentage points.
The entire greater Houston area, which includes those living outside the city limits, still maintains the highest poverty rate, with a rate of 14.1%, according to the data. It’s one of just a few of the 25 largest metropolitan areas — Detroit, Orlando, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C., being the others — that increased its poverty rate year-over-year.