Two notes on the poverty report

Two quick notes on the new Census poverty report, which mostly showed poverty and income levels flat from the previous year.

Note 1. The share of poor people who live in single-mother families has declined. It’s now 34%, down from a peak of 39% in 1996. That is, 34% of poor people live in single-mother families. It’s been between 34% and 39% for 27 years. I point that out because it’s important to realize the rise of single mothers (see Note #2 below) is not driving poverty rates. I don’t know if it’s significant, but the poverty rate for single-mother families fell from 34.2% to 33.9%, while the overall rate was steady at 15.0%. Here’s the first chart:

Note 2: There was an unusual blip down in the percentage of all (civilian non-institutionalized) people living in single-mother families. And a continued increase in people living in no family (which includes unmarried cohabitors if they have no kids). In the absence of a rise in marriage, I’m guessing this decline in the single-mother family population (a drop of half a million) is related to the recession-driven decline in fertility.

Both charts are from Current Population Survey data, as reported in the hispov2 table (link to spreadsheet file).