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Poverty Area Measures - Background and Uses

The USDA, Economic Research Service’s (ERS) Poverty Area Measures data product serves as a resource for researchers, Federal agencies, policymakers, and practitioners working to better understand and address issues of poverty and rural development. This product builds upon ERS’s longstanding work with poverty area measurement.

Since at least the 1960s, poverty area measures have been relied upon by policymakers to target, implement, and monitor Federal programs that are designed to support a range of initiatives. These initiatives include but are not limited to support for:

  • Educational and employment opportunities
  • Health care services and healthy food access
  • Transit services and community facility improvements
  • Housing assistance and land development loans
  • Fiscal health and administrative capacity of local governments
  • Energy savings
  • Access to telecommunication, including broadband

Recent Federal legislation has reinforced and expanded upon the demand for poverty area measures to meet similar needs. Measures of high and persistent poverty at multiple spatial scales are in demand as is the ability to adjust those measures using different years of data and data sources. This data product offers those capabilities for county and census tract geographies. The product is not exhaustive of all possible data years and sources, but it includes those commonly used in Federal high and persistent poverty area definitions.

High and Extreme Poverty

"High poverty" is defined as an areawide poverty rate of 20 percent or more, based on the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census’s Official Poverty Measure (OPM). “Extreme poverty” is a subset of high poverty areas where the poverty rate is 40 percent or more. It is generally understood that changes in poverty concentrations falling between 20 (high poverty) and 40 percent (extreme poverty) have the greatest marginal impact on individual well-being. The 20 percent poverty rate is also highly correlated with poverty areas that are defined by multi-factor measures of areawide economic hardship (e.g., the Appalachian Regional Commission’s county economic classification system), which highlight a range of disparities that area residents may face. As such, high and extreme poverty area measures can be used to identify areas where poverty has reached a critical impact point (i.e., where neighborhood poverty begins to negatively affect individual well-being for area residents regardless of their own poverty status) and as a proxy for the potential extent of that impact (i.e., as an area’s poverty rate increases from 20 percent up to 40 percent, the rate is likely to produce areawide poverty conditions that are more structurally and demographically systemic). For an example visualization and discussion, see Extreme Poverty Counties found Solely in Rural Areas in 2018 (Amber Waves, May 2020).

High poverty area status can fluctuate from year-to-year especially for areas with a poverty rate that is near the 20 percent cutoff; therefore the year of data chosen can impact the outcome. For instance, poverty rates can change rapidly due to cyclical changes in the macroeconomy, causing short-term economic difficulty or improvement. This can be particularly problematic for economies that rely heavily on one relatively unstable industry, as is typical of many rural manufacturing and natural resource-based economies. The ERS County Typology Codes can serve as a resource for identifying these types of areas, but caution should be taken when interpreting high poverty area status in any given year. Examination of multiple years of data can be useful for identifying patterns, such as areas of emerging high poverty. If there is interest in identifying areas with historical legacies of high poverty area status, then consideration of persistent poverty and enduring poverty area measures is recommended.

Persistent Poverty

"Persistent poverty" refers to long-standing geographic concentrations of poor individuals, as determined by OPM poverty income thresholds. Persistent poverty is defined by consistent high poverty area status over multiple decades, typically spanning 30 years. As an indicator of well-being, persistent poverty effectively captures the interwovenness of localized private sector disinvestment, deficiency of community resources, and limited economic opportunities. The long-term entrenchment of these conditions is often characterized by a lack of baseline necessities for area residents, such as access to health care facilities, grocery stores that offer affordable and nutritious food, an adequate housing market, a sufficient educational system, jobs that pay a living wage, and essential public services. The relationship among factors of chronic underdevelopment, limited access, and persistent poverty has long been recognized through Federal research and initiatives. See for example, Persistent Poverty in Rural Areas and Small Towns (Agriculture information Bulletin Number 664-54, July 1993) and U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration’s Economic Innovation Group Initiative working to tackle persistent poverty.

A persistent poverty area measure can serve many purposes, including research, policy, and program applications. For instance, when ERS’s official persistent poverty area measure was first introduced, ERS researchers sought to examine spatial trends in poverty over as long a period as possible (see the discussion and chronology of USDA ERS Poverty Area Measures in The Poverty Area Measures Data Product technical bulletin number 1967, July 2024). They were particularly interested in examining the distributional impacts of 1950s and 1960s economic prosperity trends, the War on Poverty initiatives, and related issues of interest to USDA including agrarian technological change and migration trends. More recent interests and uses have included the distributional impacts of the Great Recession, correlation to Coronavirus pandemic outcomes (see, for example, Rural America at a Glance: 2021 Edition, November 2021), Economic Information Bulletin No. 230, November 2021), as well as current trends in rural prosperity.

Official Measures

Persistent poverty area status is determined by ERS using 4 data periods, approximately 10 years apart, and spanning 30 years (baseline and 3 evaluation periods). The status is updated every decade by rolling forward the data periods used to construct the measure. For instance, the 2004 edition of the County Typology Codes includes a county-level (only) persistent poverty area measure derived from Decennial Census data years 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. The next edition of the county typology codes (2015 edition) dropped 1970 and added American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year period estimates for 2007–11 to the persistent poverty measure, which reflected a transition to using ACS estimates for poverty statistics. The current official measure includes 1990 and 2000 decennial census data and 2007–11 and 2017–21 ACS 5-year period estimates. 

The Poverty Area Measures data product contains decennial persistent poverty area measures similar to those included in the County Typology Codes, but the geographies are standardized to the most current (e.g. the 2025 release includes the measures standardized to 2023 geographies for both counties and census tracts). This inclusion allows for a direct comparison of the measures over time. See for example, a comparison of persistent poverty county geography based on official measures ending in 2007–11 and 2017–21 in Rural America at a Glance: 2023 Edition.

Research Measures

ERS often receives Federal stakeholder requests for persistent poverty area status updates in advance of the normal decennial update. These unofficial updates—referred to in this data product as research measures—were not previously published. If there is sufficient Federal and nonfederal demand and considering specific circumstances (e.g., demand for information in unusual or extreme situations, such as the 2019 Coronavirus Pandemic), these unofficial measures may be published. For example, the November 2022 and December 2023 editions contain a persistent poverty area research measure derived from 1990 and 2000 Decennial Census data and the ACS 5-year period estimates for 2007–11 and 2015–19. For consistency, high, extreme, and enduring poverty area measures using 2015-19 estimates are also included. The September 2025 edition does not contain any research measures. For years prior to 2021, only the data periods necessary for generating official persistent poverty area measures are included (i.e. measures based on 2015-19 estimates are not provided in the September 2025 edition).

Enduring Poverty

In keeping with the historical motivation for establishing a persistent poverty area measure—to examine spatial trends in poverty over as long a time as possible—this data product also includes a measure of enduring poverty (first introduced in the November 2022 edition). "Enduring poverty" areas are a subset of persistent poverty areas.

The measure extends the persistent poverty area timeframe as far back as comparable poverty area data are available. As described above, ERS’s persistent poverty area definition uses 4 time periods spanning 30 years, rolling forward every decade. The 1990 persistent poverty area measure provided in this data product includes decennial data years 1960 through 1990, while the current official measure spans 1990 to the 2017–21 ACS 5-year period estimates. The enduring poverty measure captures the entire timeframe from 1960 to 2017–21. These measures are counties that have consistently had high poverty rates for approximately 40 years or more. The same measure is provided for census tracts but spanning the years 1970 to 2017–21. This measure can be used to identify areas where poverty has historically been and remains the most entrenched.