10 of 11 States Above the National Poverty Rate Are in the South

The South has become the center of American population growth. It is attracting new residents, factories, corporate investment and sprawling suburbs at a pace unmatched by the rest of the country.

It is also home to 10 of the 11 states whose poverty rates are significantly above the national level.

New Census Bureau data covering 2023 through 2025 reveal a striking divide inside the country’s growth belt. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia all had official poverty rates statistically above the national rate of 10.7%.

New Mexico was the only state outside the Census Bureau’s Southern region to join them.

Louisiana had one of the highest rates in the country at 19.6%. Mississippi followed at 17.6%. At the opposite end, New Hampshire’s rate was 5.4%.

The findings come from the Census Bureau’s new state-by-state poverty comparison, which uses three-year averages to produce more reliable state estimates.

The same region is leading America’s population growth

The geography is notable because many of these states are hardly places Americans are abandoning.

They are gaining people.

Texas added more residents than any other state between July 2024 and July 2025, growing by about 391,000 people. Florida added nearly 197,000. North Carolina gained about 146,000, Georgia nearly 99,000 and South Carolina about 80,000.

South Carolina had the nation’s highest percentage growth during that period at 1.5%, followed closely by North Carolina at 1.3% and Texas at 1.2%.

Eight of the 10 states that added the most residents were in the South or broader Sun Belt, based on the Census Bureau’s latest state population estimates.

The longer-term change is even more pronounced. Between 2020 and 2025, the South added about 7.55 million people, growing 6%. The West grew 1.9%, the Midwest 1.1% and the Northeast 0.7%.

The South grew faster than every other region in every major age group, and its population between ages 25 and 44, the years most closely associated with working and raising families, increased 9%.

That makes the poverty numbers harder to dismiss as simply the result of population decline or economic stagnation. Growth and poverty are occurring at the same time.

Two ways of measuring poverty tell different stories

There is an important complication in the numbers. The federal government uses two major poverty measures, and they do not produce the same map.

The traditional official poverty measure compares a family’s pretax cash income with a national poverty threshold. It does not adjust that threshold for whether someone lives in an inexpensive rural county or an expensive coastal city.

The Supplemental Poverty Measure goes further. It counts benefits such as SNAP and housing assistance, includes taxes and tax credits and subtracts expenses such as medical bills and work costs. It also adjusts for differences in housing costs around the country.

Using that broader measure, the national poverty rate averaged 13% from 2023 through 2025, compared with 10.7% under the comparable official measure.

And the map changes. California, Florida, New York and Nevada all had supplemental poverty rates significantly above the national level even though their official rates were not significantly higher.

That matters particularly for the Sun Belt. Florida and Nevada do not appear among the 11 states with significantly elevated official poverty rates, but they move into the group when housing costs and other necessary expenses are included. Texas and Georgia also had supplemental poverty rates significantly higher than their official rates.

In other words, poverty in the South has two faces: places where incomes remain very low, and fast-growing places where earnings may be higher but housing, medical care and other necessities consume more of the household budget.

Cheap states are not necessarily prosperous states

The cost-of-living data help explain part of the divide. Arkansas and Mississippi were the two least expensive states in the country in 2024, with overall price levels about 13% below the U.S. average. Oklahoma was close behind.

West Virginia had the nation’s lowest housing-rent price level, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ regional price comparison.

Yet all four appear among the states with official poverty rates significantly above the national level.

Lower prices help a household only if income is high enough to begin with.

At the other end of the Sun Belt, states such as Florida and Nevada illustrate the opposite problem. Their official poverty numbers look less severe, but the supplemental measure rises once housing and other expenses are included.

The result is a region where household hardship can come from very different directions.

Growth is concentrated in different places than poverty

The South itself is not growing evenly. Much of the fastest expansion is happening around metropolitan edges. From 2020 through 2025, outlying counties of Southern metro areas grew 10.7%, nearly twice the region’s overall pace.

The population ages 25 to 44 in those outer counties grew 16%.

Meanwhile, Southern areas outside metropolitan and micropolitan regions grew just 1% over the same five years. Their population ages 45 to 64 actually fell 6.8%.

That geographic split helps explain how booming subdivisions outside Raleigh, Dallas, Nashville, Atlanta or Charlotte can coexist with persistent poverty elsewhere in the same states.

A new semiconductor plant outside one metro, a corporate relocation in another and thousands of new suburban homes can drive a state’s headline growth without immediately changing economic conditions hundreds of miles away.

Even within booming metropolitan regions, growth can create another kind of pressure as home prices, rents and transportation costs rise faster than some workers’ incomes.

National poverty fell in 2025

The broader national picture is more encouraging. The official U.S. poverty rate fell from 10.7% in 2024 to 10.2% in 2025, leaving about 34.5 million people below the official poverty threshold.

Real median household income reached $87,460, the highest level recorded in the Census Bureau series dating to 1967.

Child poverty under the official measure also fell to a record-low 13.4%. But the Supplemental Poverty Measure remained at 13.1% and was not statistically different from the previous year.

That gap matters because the supplemental measure is designed to capture many expenses families actually encounter after earning their income.

The Sun Belt’s next challenge is what happens after growth arrives

For much of the past decade, the defining economic story of the South has been expansion. People moved in. Companies followed. Factories were announced. Suburbs pushed farther outward.

Those trends are real. So is the poverty.

The newest Census numbers show that the two stories cannot be separated. Texas, Georgia and North Carolina can rank among America’s population-growth leaders while also having poverty rates significantly above the national benchmark. Florida can avoid that designation under the traditional measure and still exceed the national rate once housing and other basic expenses are counted.

The question for the next stage of Sun Belt growth is no longer simply whether people and investment keep arriving. It is how much of that growth reaches the households already there.