The Center on Poverty and Social Policy began tracking monthly poverty rates during the COVID-19 crisis. Our monthly version of the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) looks at family income and resources available during the given month, providing close to real-time estimates of the economic well-being of U.S. households. Our estimates include all taxes and transfers and accounts for introductions and expirations of federal pandemic relief efforts. As such, we are able to directly measure the volatility of poverty throughout the year and the role of government transfers in reducing economic insecurity. Full details on our methods can be found in Parolin, Curran, Matsudaira, Waldfogel, and Wimer (2022). Starting in 2024, we introduced changes in our methodology to enhance the conceptual soundness of our estimates. We provide a series of monthly poverty estimates from 2020-2023 with the new changes applied to ensure consistent comparability with those from 2024. Full details on our update in methodology from 2024 can be found in Curran, Lee, and Parolin (2025).
Project Update: We are deeply grateful to the Gates Foundation for funding our monthly poverty data project through the end of 2025. With this phase of the project concluding, we are no longer publishing new monthly data. This tool was especially valuable during the pandemic, when timely, accessible data was critical for understanding rapidly changing conditions and informing public debate and policy decisions. We appreciate all engagement with the project and look forward to expanding this work with renewed interest in the future.
Note: Monthly poverty rates are updated through December 2025. (October 2025 Current Population Survey data were not collected due to the U.S. federal government shutdown.)
We also track monthly poverty rates by race and ethnicity and by age, including all taxes and transfers. To download poverty estimates directly for each demographic group, click the "get the data" link available under each figure.