Annual Report: The State of Poverty and Disadvantage in New York City Vol. 7

In 2023, the cost of five basic necessities that make up the poverty line—food, shelter, utilities, clothing, and telephone/ internet—outpaced income growth and the overall rate of inflation. This pushed the poverty threshold up to $47,190 for a renting family of four—7.5% higher than the 2022 poverty threshold of $43,890—causing more New Yorkers to fall below this line.  

While continued economic growth and declining unemployment typically reduce poverty levels, this year’s report, the seventh volume of the State of Poverty and Disadvantage in New York City, uses the latest data from the Poverty Tracker to examine how the increased cost of living plunged an additional 100,000 New Yorkers into poverty.

As a result, New York City’s poverty rate hit 25% – or 1 in 4 New Yorkers – up from 23% last year, and is nearly double the national poverty rate of 13%. The report’s findings are based on 2023 data, the latest year for which data about poverty in New York City is available.   

The data further show that of the 2.02 million New Yorkers now living in poverty, 1.6 million are adults and 420,000 are children. Poverty rates for adults (25%) and children (26%) each rose by 1 percentage point from the year prior, bringing the child poverty rate to the highest observed in Poverty Tracker data since the study began collecting data on child poverty in 2017. 

It is not only those living in poverty who struggle to make ends meet. Material hardship, defined as facing severe difficulty affording food, housing, bills, and any form of medical hardship, is even more widespread across the city and affects New Yorkers living above the poverty line. Despite observing a decline in material hardship from last year’s rate of 29%, this year’s report still shows that a quarter (26%) of New Yorkers faced material hardship. Similarly, while the prevalence of work-limiting health problems (22%) and serious psychological distress (12%) among New Yorkers decreased slightly from the year prior, the combined prevalence of both issues remains above pre-pandemic levels, reflecting the ongoing mental toll of the pandemic and its aftermath in the lives of New Yorkers. 

The 2025 Poverty Tracker features novel analysis spotlighting how a majority of NYC families with children (78%) – more than 650,000 families and more than 1 million children – stand to benefit from policy recommendations that CPRAC issued last December.  These policies include expanding the state’s child tax credit and SNAP, creating a statewide housing voucher program, and boosting monthly public assistance. Thus, CPRAC beneficiaries are a broad, diverse set of families, including 34% who live in poverty, 50% who are low income, and 16% who are moderate income. Their experiences include: 

• In 2023, 43% of CPRAC-eligible families could not cover a $400 expense with cash on hand or an equivalent.  

• A large majority (73%) of parents in these families had to reduce their savings in recent years to cope with rising prices, and nearly one in three (31%) said they took on an additional job or more work to cope with inflation.  

• More than half (54%) of potential CPRAC beneficiaries were rent-burdened in 2023, spending more than 30% of their cash income on rent.  

We know poverty is a crisis that public policy can prevent; year over year, our Poverty Tracker data supports this fact. But now, as inflationary pressures mount and wages stagnate, critical social safety net programs are under threat of being cut by the federal government. That’s why we continue to shed light on meaningful data and support impactful programs and policies that protect the most vulnerable among us.