Why It Matters

The United States official poverty rate fell to 10.2 percent in 2025, down from 10.7 percent the prior year, according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published Sept. 16. At the same time, the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) registered 13.1 percent, with no statistically significant change from 2024, a divergence that carries direct implications for Congress and the Trump administration as debates over the federal safety net continue.

The SPM, unlike the Official Poverty Measure (OPM), uses after-tax income, includes refundable tax credits and the value of noncash benefits such as those from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and subtracts certain out-of-pocket expenses. CRS notes that the SPM "captures the effects of policy changes in ways the official poverty measure does not."

The gap between the two measures is a direct signal for lawmakers: the falling OPM reflects cash income gains, while the SPM registered a higher poverty rate of 13.1 percent in 2025, with no statistically significant change from 2024, once government transfers, taxes, and out-of-pocket costs are factored in. Because the two measures respond differently to legislative changes, which benchmark Congress and the administration rely on has real consequences for how policy outcomes are evaluated and communicated to the public.

The Big Picture

The CRS report traces the current divergence between the two measures to the expiration of pandemic-era policies after 2022, including expansions to SNAP and refundable tax credits such as stimulus payments and the expanded Child Tax Credit. During the pandemic period, those expansions pushed the SPM below the official rate; after their expiration, the SPM once again surpassed it, and the 2025 figures continued that pattern.

Among the demographic groups tracked under the OPM, children saw their poverty rate fall to 13.4 percent from 14.4 percent, adults ages 18 to 64 fell to 9.2 percent from 9.6 percent, and full-time year-round workers fell to 1.6 percent from 1.8 percent. Residents of the Northeast saw their rate drop to 9.0 percent from 9.9 percent.

The poverty estimates from both measures are drawn from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) and carry margins of error from sampling as well as unmeasured nonsampling error. CRS flags that nonresponse to the survey tends to bias poverty rates downward overall, because low-income individuals are less likely to respond, and that nonresponse among low-income Hispanic households was measured to be more prevalent in the 2025 CPS ASEC than among Black or non-Hispanic White households, complicating demographic comparisons. Those data quality caveats matter when the figures are used to justify or oppose specific program changes.

Any legislative action that reduces SNAP benefits or restructures refundable tax credits would be captured in the SPM but not the OPM, because those programs are counted in the supplemental measure but excluded from the official one.

The Bottom Line

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) report notes that the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) registered 13.1 percent in 2025, with no statistically significant change from 2024, and that the SPM captures the effects of policy changes in ways the official poverty measure does not.

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