PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia’s notoriously high poverty rate is at its lowest level in 15 years, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Census. But poverty among children and Black Philadelphians has risen.
The city remains the poorest of the 10 largest U.S. cities, but its poverty rate stands at 22.8%, down half a percent from 2019 and more than 3% since 2016. The Census data shows median income has risen 11%, faster than in the state of Pennsylvania and the U.S., and is now close to $53,000.
But Mayor Jim Kenney’s Director of Policy and Deputy Chief of Staff Julia Hinckley said the administration was concerned to see that child poverty rose from 32% to 34%, and the poverty rate for Black Philadelphians went from just under 27% to more than 28%.
“Any lack of progress in kids under any measure is unacceptable, and same with race,” Hinckley said. “We want to see more progress in both of those places.”
Hinckley said the numbers are based solely on income, and do not include resources such as SNAP and the child tax credit that the census shows have alleviated poverty at a national level. Those numbers were not available for Philadelphia.
Related
“We can see that across the country, child poverty was cut in half, and Philadelphia kids are in that group,” she said.
Hinckley said she’s hopeful that a fuller analysis of poverty data, known as the Supplemental Poverty Measure, will show improvement. Supplemental data for cities is not expected for several months.
She added the city continues to take short-term measures to help families, such as rental assistance and help accessing federal benefits, along with medium-term fixes such as job creation, and long-term efforts such as universal pre-K.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the rise in median income reported by the U.S. Census.