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Price and Index Number Research
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2025 Research Supplemental Poverty Measure Thresholds
The Division of Price and Index Number Research (DPINR), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), finalized the 2025 Research Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) thresholds on August 24, 2026. These thresholds incorporate the changes approved by the ITWG SPM on September 30, 2020. The changes are described on the main DPINR SPM webpage. SPM thresholds are used by the Census Bureau in combination with SPM resources to produce SPM poverty statistics. The SPM is meant to provide a complementary perspective for examining poverty and is not designed to replace the official poverty measure. Both SPM and official poverty statistics are produced by the Census Bureau.
As seen in Chart 1, the 2025 SPM thresholds for consumer units with two adults and two children are $41,323 for owners with mortgages, $34,326 for owners without mortgages, and $41,701 for renters, as compared to the official poverty threshold of $32,649 (for two adults, two children). The thresholds for owners with mortgages and renters are not statistically significantly different. In contrast, the threshold for owners without mortgages is statistically significantly different from both thresholds. These results are based on a 0.1 percent level of statistical significance and follow the same relationships as reported for previous years.
While the standard errors for these thresholds have risen, the standard error as a percentage of the thresholds has remained largely steady. These results suggest that despite rising standard errors, SPM thresholds are not becoming less precise.
Chart 2 shows how the 2025 SPM thresholds compared to the 2024 thresholds. For all three housing tenure groups, the 2025 thresholds are statistically significantly higher than those for 2024. The thresholds, year to year, were statistically significant at the 0.1 percent level. This is consistent with comparisons from previous years.
In comparison to earlier years, the changes in the thresholds from 2020 to 2025 are lower than in some previous periods, particularly those surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic period. Chart 3 shows the year-over-year change in the thresholds from 2020 through 2025, based on the corrected series. The 2025 thresholds increased 4.40–6.33 percent from 2024; this is lower than the 9.21–9.67 percent increase seen in 2022.
The changes in the thresholds are in part driven by the change in the price index, since the SPM uses 5 years of Consumer Expenditures data which are lagged by one year. All data need to be adjusted for inflation to produce an interpretable value for the threshold year. Earlier analysis revealed that, between 2021 and 2022, the large increase in the thresholds was primarily due to the high inflation rate in 2022. Chart 4 below shows the year-over-year inflation rate for the Food, Clothing, Shelter, Utilities, and telephone and internet service price index (FCSUti) as well as the CPI-U and the C-CPI-U inflation rate.[i] Though annual FCSUti inflation fell to 3.44 percent in 2025, continuing to decline from a peak of 7.21 percent in 2022, FCSUti inflation remains above the level seen in previous years.
The SPM is a work in progress and is expected to incorporate improvements over time, like those introduced with the new methodology approved in 2020. The 2025 SPM thresholds and statistics follow this same methodology. As noted on the main BLS poverty webpage, a corrected set of thresholds and statistics for 2019 to 2024 were released on July 17, 2026; these thresholds reflect corrections to the underlying computer code used to produce the previously published values.
Last modified date: August 24, 2026
[i] FCSUti inflation fell less from its 2022 peak in 2023 than CPI-U inflation in large part due to the higher weighting of shelter inflation in FCSUti figures.