Newly Released Poverty Report Shows Poverty and Near Poverty Declined to New Lows in 2019
In 2019, just before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, New York City’s poverty and near poverty rates fell to the lowest point since the series began, starting with 2005 data. The latest New York City Poverty Report (PDF), released this month, shows that poverty declined for the city as a whole and for many of the demographic and geographic subgroups tracked in the report. No group showed an increase in poverty from 2018 to 2019. This report does not capture the dramatic change in the city’s economy due to the Covid crisis starting in early 2020.
In 2019, the New York City Government (NYCgov) poverty rate was 17.9 percent, and the at or near poverty rate was 40.8 percent. These rates represent statistically significant declines compared to the rates in 2018.
These are the citywide poverty and near poverty rates in New York City going back to 2005:
Data published in this year’s report covers the five-year period 2015–2019. A few of the notable (and statistically significant) declines in that period were changes in:
- Child poverty (-1.7 percentage points),
- Poverty among two parent families (-2.5 percentage points)
- High school graduates (-2.8 percentage points),
- Hispanics (-3.2 percentage points),
- Non-citizens (-4.1 percentage points)
- All families with children under 18 (-2.1 percentage points)
The poverty rate also fell in all boroughs except Queens, where the rate remained unchanged.
Even though poverty rates fell for many groups, differences among groups persisted. Poverty differences measured across race, ethnicity and gender did not diminish.
There were several forces driving the decline in poverty rates. One was an historically strong economic expansion, which created large numbers of jobs for full-time workers at high wages. Employment in 2019 was higher than at the employment peak before the Great Recession. Nearly 75 percent of working-age adults reported at least some work, with an increase in the number employed in full-time year-round jobs.
Another major factor was the continued rise in the minimum wage. In 2014 New York State legislated a phased-in increase of the $7.25 per hour minimum wage to $15 per hour. In 2019, all but the smallest employers in the city paid workers the $15 minimum. This increase in the minimum wage helped to move more low-income families over their poverty threshold. Wages for the bottom 10 percent of wage workers rose 8.3 percent from 2015–2019.
The numbers of New Yorkers whose economic situations improved was large. In 2019, there were about 521,000 fewer people in poverty or near poverty in the city compared to 2013.
The Covid-19 pandemic, and the economic lockdown associated with it, had a dramatic impact on the New York City economy. In addition to the overall impact on the labor force, preliminary data research indicates some groups, including women and Asian-Americans, were disproportionately affected.
Federal assistance provided some relief from COVID in the form of stimulus credits, expanded child tax credits and expanded unemployment and SNAP benefits. There is evidence these programs will make significant improvements in 2020 and 2021 poverty rates, especially for children. The next annual poverty report, which will be released in spring 2022, will be the first that begins to tell the story of the impact of Covid-19 on poverty and near poverty in New York City.
The Poverty Report is based on the NYCgov Poverty Measure, a measure designed by NYC Opportunity to measure poverty in New York City more accurately than the federal poverty measure. Among other things, it puts more emphasis on housing costs, which are considerably higher in New York City than in the nation as a whole.
