By the numbers
Wisconsin’s poverty rate declined for the second consecutive year in 2024 to 10.3 percent, data from the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates show.
According to the Census report, released in July, the official poverty rate, shown in the graph, is the share of people whose pre-tax cash income falls below a national poverty threshold, adjusted annually for inflation, that varies by family size.
State-level poverty figures go back to 1959, with data collected in the 1960 Decennial Census. That year, the estimated poverty rate in Wisconsin was 15.7 percent. That fell by nearly half by 1979, when the poverty rate was measured at 8.7 percent.
In 1995, the earliest year for which annual data are available from the Census Bureau, the Wisconsin poverty rate had was at 8.9 percent, falling to 8.1 percent in 2000 and 2001 before climbing as high as 13.5 percent in 2013.
During the mid-to-late 2010s, the level decreased back to a low of 10 percent, recorded in 2020, before a rise during the pandemic recession. The Census also produces a Supplemental Poverty Measure, which is not shown here. The three-year average poverty rate for Wisconsin across 2023-2025 according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure was 7.9 percent. The SPM uses post-tax, post-transfer income (after payments for SNAP and housing assistance) minus certain necessary expenses (medical costs, work expenses and child support), and it evaluates that income against thresholds based on Consumer Expenditure Survey data on spending for basic necessities. It also counts sources of income more broadly, including unmarried partners and unrelated children living in the household.
Wyatt Eichholz is a policy and legislative associate at the Badger Institute.
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