{"id":229155,"date":"2025-09-15T16:37:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T16:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/229155\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T16:37:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T16:37:38","slug":"houston-has-the-highest-poverty-rate-among-the-biggest-u-s-cities-new-census-data-finds-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/229155\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston has the highest poverty rate among the biggest U.S cities, new Census data finds \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Downtown<\/a><\/p>\n

Lucio Vasquez \/ Houston Public Media<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

One out of five residents \u2014 approximately 21.2% \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019ve 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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“Houston is one of America\u2019s fastest growing cities, and growth \u2014 rapid growth \u2014 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.”<\/p>\n

Those figures, which can be analyzed on the U.S. Census Bureau’s website,<\/a> reflect the most recent data from 2024. Overall, about 12.1% of American families are living at or below the poverty line.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 like Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin \u2014 all experienced a marginal decrease in their poverty rate, while El Paso increased by 0.3 percentage points.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 Detroit, Orlando, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C., being the others \u2014 that increased its poverty rate year-over-year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lucio Vasquez \/ Houston Public Media Houston has a higher percentage of residents living in poverty among the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":74024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5130],"tags":[46324,79,4345,123760,425,50,123761,358,3187],"class_list":["post-229155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-census-bureau","tag-economy","tag-houston","tag-houston-growth","tag-local","tag-news","tag-poverty-level","tag-texas","tag-tx"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115209296215726570","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}