Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2025

SEPT. 15, 2026 - The U.S. Census Bureau today announced that real median household income was $87,460 in 2025, the highest on record dating back to 1967.

The official poverty rate fell 0.5 percentage points to 10.2% in 2025. The following 2025 findings were not statistically different from 2024: the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) rate in 2025 was 13.1% and in 2025, 26.7 million people (7.9%) were uninsured for the entire year, according to the 2026 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC).

These findings come from three Census Bureau reports, "Income in the United States: 2025," "Poverty in the United States: 2025 " and "Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2025."

While the official poverty measure is based on money income, which is pretax and does not include tax credits, the SPM is a post-tax and transfer poverty measure. The SPM provides an alternative way of measuring poverty in the United States and serves as an additional indicator of economic well-being. The Census Bureau has published poverty estimates using the SPM annually since 2011 in collaboration with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

For consistency with past reports, the income estimates in the "Income in the United States: 2025" report are based on the concept of money income. Estimates of post-tax household income and income inequality are also available in the report.

All three reports are based on data from the CPS ASEC. The Current Population Survey (CPS), sponsored jointly by the Census Bureau and BLS, is conducted monthly and is a primary source of labor force statistics for the U.S. population. Supplements are added in most months. The CPS ASEC - conducted in February, March and April - is designed to provide annual, national estimates of income, poverty and health insurance, collecting information about job status, income and health insurance coverage for the prior calendar year.

Although the 2026 CPS ASEC was collected using standard procedures, response rates are still lower than they were before the pandemic. The weighted response rate for the 2026 CPS ASEC was 61.3% compared to 62.0% for the previous year.

As response rates decline, the risk of bias increases. To reduce the bias, the CPS ASEC program includes adjustments to survey weights for nonresponse and controls them to population totals to ensure the CPS ASEC results are representative of the U.S. population.

Since response rates remain below pre-pandemic levels, examining how respondents differ from nonrespondents is important, as this difference could affect the accuracy of the estimates. For more details on how sample differences and the associated nonresponse bias impact income and official poverty estimates, refer to the Research Matters blog, "Using Administrative Data to Evaluate Nonresponse Bias in the 2026 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement." This blog also discusses ongoing research into new methods that could better address nonresponse bias and other sources of nonsampling error.