NEW VIDEO: Get the Facts About Poverty in New Hampshire

March 24, 2025 | Phil Sletten
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Today, the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute released a new video explaining the facts about poverty in New Hampshire.

WATCH:

 

This blog serves as a companion piece to the video and includes links, references, and explanations of specific facts and figures in the video. 

New Hampshire has one of the highest household incomes among the states and has the lowest poverty rate in America.

Using the Official Poverty Measure, which is based on gross pre-tax income and does not account for regional variations in costs, and using data collected through the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, New Hampshire has had either the lowest or one of the lowest recorded poverty rates among the fifty states during the last decade. As documented in NHFPI research and by the U.S. Census Bureau, New Hampshire had the lowest poverty rate among the states, based on the Official Poverty Measure, in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016. New Hampshire also had a high, although not the highest, median household income relative to the majority of states in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016, according to the American Community Survey.

The Official Poverty Measure is not the only way to measure hardship. For example, the Supplemental Poverty Measure makes regional adjustments for housing costs and other methodological changes relative to the Official Poverty Measure. Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure, New Hampshire did not have the lowest poverty rate in the country in the data collected from 2021 to 2023; neighboring Maine’s poverty rate was lower. For more information about alternative methods for measuring poverty and hardship, see NHFPI’s February 2024 Issue Brief Poverty and Food Insecurity in New Hampshire During and Following the COVID-19 Crisis and NHFPI’s October 18, 2024 blog Low Poverty Rate in New Hampshire Does Not Rank Lowest Among States by All Estimates of Poverty.

But does that mean that everyone is doing OK? About 100,000 people live in poverty, including about 20,000 children.

The number of people in poverty in New Hampshire, as estimated by the American Community Survey based on data collected during 2023, was 97,935, with a margin of error of plus or minus 8,712. This margin of error indicates that, based on the survey data, there is a 90 percent chance that the actual number of people in poverty in New Hampshire was between 106,647 and 89,223. The estimated number of children in poverty was 19,866 (+/- 3,602) in 2023.

And what about residents above the poverty line? Nearly one in three Granite State adults said it was difficult to afford usual household expenses in 2024. That's about 420,000 people in a state of 1.4 million.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey collects data from adults in the United States on approximately a monthly basis. The sample sizes collected in each state are intended to be large enough to produce reliable estimates for each state. One of the questions asked by the Household Pulse Survey from 2020 to September 2024 is “In the last 7 days, how difficult has it been for your household to pay for usual household expenses, including but not limited to food, rent or mortgage, car payments, medical expenses, student loans, and so on?” The answer options were 1) Not at all difficult, 2) A little difficult, 3) Somewhat difficult, and 4) Very difficult. Following the labeling convention of the U.S. Census Bureau, NHFPI analysis identifies people responding that affording usual household expenses has been somewhat or very difficult as facing difficulty affording usual expenses. This analysis aggregates data collected in 2024, which includes surveys conducted between January 9 and September 16, 2024 (no surveys with available New Hampshire data were conducted in October, November, or December, as the Household Pulse Survey was incorporated into a national longitudinal dataset and transitioned to the Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey), to decrease the risk of small sample sizes impacting the reliability of the results on a month-by-month basis. The estimated population of New Hampshire on July 1, 2024 was 1,409,032, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program. The average of 30 percent of adults who expressed that it was somewhat or very difficult to afford usual household expenses was considered representative of the entire population; while children have historically been more likely to be in poverty in New Hampshire, recent data show the child poverty rate is similar to the overall poverty rate in the state. The median household incomes in New Hampshire for families with children and for those without children are not statistically significantly different.

The cost of living for a family of three is estimated to be nearly $100,000.

Two sources for comprehensive cost-of-living estimates can be applied to New Hampshire. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator estimates the statewide cost of living for a family with two working adults and one child in New Hampshire is $104,373 in 2025. The Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator estimated the income a family needed in 2025 for a “modest yet adequate standard of living,” which does not include costs such as paying for student loans or for homeownership, ranged from $75,966 in Coos County (the least expensive county) to $101,336 in Rockingham County for a household with two adults and one child. The Economic Policy Institute’s estimates are not available at the state level, but the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator estimated a family of three with two working adults in Coos County would face annual costs of $88,949, and the same family would have $109,665 in expenses in Rockingham County.

And yet our median household income for all household sizes is around $97,000 a year.

Median household income in 2023 was $96,838 (+/- $2,243) according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, with an average household size of 2.39 people. The median household income represents the household for which half of all incomes are higher and half of all incomes are lower.

And one in four households had incomes below $50,000.

The distribution of households incomes in both 2022 and 2023, according to data collected by the American Community Survey, show 25.7 percent and 24.5 percent of New Hampshire households, respectively, had incomes of $49,999 or less.

Our neighbors are struggling across the state in cities and small towns.

Poverty exists in every county in the State of New Hampshire. For example, Rockingham County, with an estimated poverty rate of 4.8 percent during the 2019 to 2023 period, had the lowest poverty rate in the state. However, this populous, largely suburban and exurban southeastern county had the second-highest number of residents in poverty in the state, with an estimated 15,000 people living in poverty in the county. Rural northern and western counties faced the highest poverty rates.

Federal aid during the COVID-19 pandemic was effective at reducing poverty, even cutting the number of children in poverty by half from 2019 to 2021. However, that aid expired in 2022, and poverty rates quickly rebounded.

Based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which incorporates the impacts of key tax credits on household incomes and other adjustments, the number of children in poverty in New Hampshire fell from 21,000 (+/- 4,000) in 2019 to 10,000 (+/- 2,000) in 2021, before rebounding to 18,000 (+/- 4,000) children in 2022.

National data provide deeper insights into the reasons for this decline in 2021 and the subsequent rebound in 2022. The national Supplemental Poverty Measure child poverty rate fell 4.5 percentage points, from 9.7 percent to 5.2 percent, from 2020 to 2021. That 46.4 percent reduction in the child poverty rate results from about 3.367 million fewer children in poverty nationwide than the 7.196 million children estimated to be in poverty in 2020, based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure. There were also approximately 58.6 percent fewer children in poverty by this measure in 2021 than in 2019. Refundable tax credits, including the Child Tax Credit, comprised the largest single contributor to the reduction in child poverty for children. About 5.3 million people, including 2.9 million children and specifically 1.0 million children under age 6, were lifted out of poverty, as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure, because of the Child Tax Credit in 2021. About 2.1 million children were kept out of poverty specifically by the expanded component of the Child Tax Credit created by the American Rescue Plan Act. When the one-year tax credit expired, child poverty as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure rebounded nationally, rising from a 5.2 percent rate to 12.4 percent, as well as in New Hampshire.

Policies targeting resources to people in need helps individuals and families while effectively boosting economic growth overall.

Existing research suggests policies that deploy resources directly to residents with low incomes, as well as policies that support public services, employment, and infrastructure, are effective at stimulating economic growth. Key public-sector and private-sector researchers evaluating the economic return on investment of different economic policies, including modeling from the U.S. Congressional Budget Office and Moody’s Analytics, estimate that financial assistance or tax reductions targeted to households with low incomes, as well as infrastructure investments, are among the more effective policies governments for stimulating growth, including relative to tax rate reductions for higher income households and for corporate income.

Moody’s Analytics conducted economic modeling to estimate the effects of various fiscal policies on the economy. In January 2021, Moody’s estimated each additional dollar in food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the first quarter of 2021 would have boosted the size of the overall economy by $1.61 by the end of 2021, as individuals would have spent their income support on food in the local economy. Supplemental unemployment insurance would have boosted the economy by $1.49 per dollar invested over the same time period, as unemployed individuals with fewer resources would have quickly used these benefits in the economy. These two programs were the most effective among those analyzed, and transfer payments or tax reductions targeted at individuals with lower incomes were generally the most effective policies at stimulating the economy among the range of programs considered in Moody’s analysis.

This analysis echoes those performed by respected, nonpartisan government institutions, including the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Assessing the multiplier effect of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act policies following the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office identified the highest potential multiplier from purchases of goods and services by the federal government (2.5 on the high end of the range of multiplier estimates, with 0.5 at the low end), which directly stimulates demand in the economy. Transfer payments to state and local governments for infrastructure (2.2 to 0.4) had the next highest potential positive impact, while transfer payments to individuals, including SNAP benefits and unemployment compensation (2.1 to 0.4), and transfer payments to state and local governments for non-infrastructure purposes (1.8 to 0.4) followed with the next highest potential benefits.

See NHFPI’s resource New Hampshire Policy Points 2025, the Conclusion chapter and Endnotes 54 and 58 of the Funding Public Services chapter, for more information. See also NHFPI’s August 2023 Issue Brief State Business Tax Rate Reductions Led to Between $496 Million and $729 Million Less for Public Services.

Learn more

For more information about poverty in New Hampshire, see NHFPI’s: