Kids Count Data Center

Definitions: Children living in census tracts with poverty rates of 30 percent or more.

Research indicates that as neighborhood poverty rates increase, undesirable outcomes rise and opportunities for success are less likely. The effects of concentrated poverty begin to appear once neighborhood poverty rates rise above 20 percent and continue to grow as the concentration of poverty increases up to the 40 percent threshold. This indicator defines areas of concentrated poverty as those census tracts with overall poverty rates of 30 percent or more because it is a commonly used threshold that lies between the starting point and leveling off point for negative neighborhood effects. The 2011 federal poverty threshold is $22,811 per year for a family of two adults and two children.

Data Source:

Population Reference Bureau analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Decennial Census Summary File 1 and Summary File 3 and the 2007–2011 American Community Survey 5-year data.

Footnotes: Updated April 2013.

S - Estimates suppressed when the confidence interval around the percentage is greater than or equal to 10 percentage points. N.A. – Data not available.

Data is provided for the 50 most populous cities according to the most recent Census counts. Cities for which data is collected may change over time.

A 90 percent confidence interval for each estimate can be found at:  Children living in areas of concentrated poverty.

Note: The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are not included in maps and rankings because they are not states and therefore comparisons on many indicators of child well being are not meaningful.