New York Poverty Rate: Housing Costs, SNAP Cuts, and Disparities

The New York poverty rate was about 14% statewide in 2024 under the official federal measure, and roughly 26% in New York City — the highest level the city’s main longitudinal study has ever recorded, meaning 2.2 million residents live below the poverty line.¹² Both figures run well above the national rate of about 12 to 13%, and both understate hardship in a state where housing eats a bigger share of income than almost anywhere in the country.³

Why the Number Depends on Which Line You Draw

The federal poverty guideline is a single national income threshold — $32,150 for a family of four in 2025 — that does not adjust for where you live.⁴ By that measure, New York State’s rate sits around 14%.¹

The Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) adjusts for local housing costs, counts noncash benefits like food stamps as income, and subtracts work and medical expenses. New York is one of only seven states where the SPM rate is higher than the official rate, because housing here costs so much more than the national baseline.⁵ In New York City, the SPM threshold for a family of four renting an apartment was $43,890 in 2022, well above the federal figure.⁶ The city also maintains its own measure, calibrated to local housing and nondiscretionary costs like child care and commuting.⁷

The practical takeaway: the federal number captures the most extreme deprivation; the SPM and city measures reveal a much larger population that cannot cover the basics.

The Rise Since 2021

New York City’s poverty rate climbed to 26% in 2024, the third consecutive annual increase and the highest in the Poverty Tracker’s history, affecting 2.2 million people including nearly 450,000 children.² That is double the national rate of 13%.³

The pattern lines up with federal policy. Pandemic-era programs — the expanded Child Tax Credit, boosted SNAP, emergency rental aid — held rates roughly flat through 2021 despite the shock. When those supports expired at the end of 2021, the rate jumped in 2022 and has climbed every year since, adding about 100,000 New Yorkers to the poverty count between 2022 and 2023 alone.⁸ Researchers attribute the increase to housing and food costs rising while wages and public benefits did not keep up.³

Hardship Reaches Far Above the Poverty Line

About 5 million New Yorkers — three in five city residents — live below 200% of the poverty line, and people in that low-income band report material hardship at rates similar to those in official poverty.²⁶ More than half of adult New Yorkers experienced at least one form of material hardship in 2024, such as being unable to afford food, missing rent, or having utilities shut off. Severe hardship touched 26%.⁸

Statewide, the United For ALICE project found that 48% of New York households fell below its survival-budget threshold in 2024: 14% in official poverty and another 34% working but unable to reliably cover rent, food, transportation, and health care.⁹

Most of these people have jobs. The majority of working-age SNAP recipients in New York City are employed or live with an employed partner, and more than 65% of workers earning between $16.50 and $25 an hour reported at least one form of material hardship in 2023. Hardship did not meaningfully drop off until wages crossed $25 an hour.⁸¹⁰

Where Poverty Is Worst

Across the Boroughs

Poverty rates vary sharply by borough. Based on 2019–2023 American Community Survey data:¹¹

Bronx: 27.0%
Brooklyn: 18.9%
Manhattan: 15.8%
Queens: 12.2%
Staten Island: 10.9%

Concentrations in the South Bronx rival the poorest communities in the country. Neighborhoods like Claremont Village and West Farms report poverty rates above 45%. In Mott Haven/Melrose, the 2024 rate was 42.6%, with child poverty near 50% and median household income of $27,360.¹¹¹² In the broader South Bronx, 47% of households received SNAP in 2021, compared to 19% citywide.¹³

Upstate and Rural Counties

Statewide, county-level poverty ranges from 5.3% in Nassau to 26.9% in the Bronx. Several Upstate counties sit at the high end: Broome and Cattaraugus both exceed 17%, and rural North Country counties like Franklin and St. Lawrence rank among the poorest rural jurisdictions in the state.¹ A 2022 Comptroller’s report identified unreliable child care and transportation as particularly severe barriers in rural areas.¹⁴

Upstate cities carry some of the worst child poverty concentrations in the country. In 2022, between 40% and 46% of children in Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo lived in poverty.¹⁵

Who Bears the Burden

Race and Ethnicity

Poverty in New York falls hardest on communities of color. The 2023 ACS official poverty rates for New York City were 24.8% for Hispanic residents, 21.7% for Black residents, 16.8% for Asian residents, and 11.5% for white residents.¹⁶ Wealth gaps are even wider than income gaps: statewide, the median white household had a net worth of $276,900 in 2021, compared to $18,870 for Black households, and 24% of Black New Yorkers owned their homes versus 63% of white residents.¹⁷

Children

Child poverty in New York City reached 26% in 2023, nearly double the national rate of 14%.¹⁸ Statewide, 18.8% of children — roughly 736,000 — lived in poverty in 2022, ranking New York 41st nationally. A decade earlier the state had tracked the national average; by 2022, a 2.5 percentage-point gap had opened as national rates fell and New York’s stalled.¹⁵ The Bronx has the highest child poverty rate of any county, 35.3%.¹⁹ Government transfers and tax credits cut the city’s child poverty rate by 43% in 2023, keeping an estimated 316,000 children above the line.

Seniors

Older New Yorkers are moving in the wrong direction. In New York City, the poverty rate for residents 65 and older was 21.5% in 2023, higher than the citywide rate and up 2.7 points over a decade in which overall poverty actually declined. The growth was nearly double the national pace. In the Bronx, nearly 30% of seniors live in poverty.²⁰ Statewide, average Social Security benefits cover only 61% of what the 2024 Elder Economic Security Index estimates is needed for independent living in New York, leaving an annual shortfall of about $14,800. Among women living alone, 59% fall below the Elder Index threshold.²¹

Why: Housing Costs Above All

Housing is the single largest force pushing New Yorkers into and keeping them in poverty. In 2024, 51.6% of New York City renter households were rent-burdened (paying at least 30% of income on rent), and 28.8% were severely burdened, paying more than half.²² In the Bronx the median rent-to-income ratio hit 37.3%. Renters already in poverty give up an average of 72% of their income to housing.²³

Rental costs in the New York metro area have risen more than 1,000% since 1968, substantially outpacing overall inflation. Residential evictions rose 9.7% in 2025, and the daily homeless shelter census remains well above 2022 levels.²² Housing assistance programs like Section 8 and CityFHEPS currently keep an estimated 150,000 New Yorkers out of poverty and another 140,000 out of deep poverty. Researchers project that cutting federal housing aid would push another 50,000 city residents below the poverty line.²³

What Federal SNAP Cuts Could Add

The federal budget reconciliation bill passed in 2025 is projected to cut federal SNAP spending in New York by at least $13 billion over 10 years and push more than 100,000 New Yorkers into poverty annually from 2028 through 2034, according to analysis by the Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy and the National Bureau of Economic Research.²⁴

The law shifts up to $2.1 billion in annual costs to New York State, according to the governor’s office, and expands work requirements to households with children as young as seven and to adults up to age 64. More than 300,000 households could lose some or all of their benefits, with an average cut of $220 a month.²⁵ SNAP benefits currently generate roughly $12 billion in annual economic activity in New York and support more than 17,000 retailers.²⁶

What the State Is Doing

New York established the Child Poverty Reduction Advisory Council in 2021 with a mandate to cut child poverty in half within a decade. As of mid-2026, the council estimates that enacted policies will deliver a 17.9% reduction, well short of the 50% target.²⁷

The state expanded the Empire State Child Credit, removing the minimum income requirement so the poorest families can now receive the full refundable credit. For tax year 2025, the maximum is $1,000 per child under four and $330 per child ages four through 16, rising to $500 for the older group in 2026.²⁸ New York also created a $1,800 birth benefit for public assistance recipients and mandated universal free school meals.²⁷

In 2025, Governor Hochul directed $50 million specifically at the three Upstate cities with the highest child poverty: $25 million to Rochester for Project Prosper, which offers $1,000 monthly cash incentives for two years to TANF-eligible pregnant women along with rental subsidies and mentoring for 1,200 families, and $12.5 million each to Syracuse and Buffalo for case management, workforce development, housing, and savings-match programs.²⁹

A Columbia University analysis projected that enacting CPRAC’s full set of recommendations — including a $1,500 child credit, doubled cash assistance, a state food benefit for immigrants excluded from SNAP, and a permanent housing voucher program — would cost $8.9 billion but generate $94.1 billion in long-term benefits through improved lifetime health and earnings for children.³⁰ Legislation to phase in that $1,500 credit by 2030 remains in committee in the state senate.³¹

1
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2
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3
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4
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31
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