Texas City Has Highest Number of Residents Living in Poverty

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Despite the number of American living in poverty having fallen by over 3.5 million in 2015, there are still more than 43 million struggling to overcome financial hardships.

The metro area in which poverty rate is the highest is heavily Latino populated Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas (89.9% Latino population). Nearly 33% of the area’s 245,000 live below the poverty line, 24/7 Wall St. reports. South Texas accounted for the top three cities on the list.

Reviewing data from the U.S. Census Bureau to determine which cities had the highest poverty rates, a list of 56 was created. The cities were chosen based on the basis of their being more than one in five residents living in poverty.

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The income threshold that determines the poverty line for a family is determined by its size and composition. A family of four that has two adults and two children, their threshold is $24,036 per year; if their total income is below that, they are considered below the poverty line.

The threshold does not account for factors such as cost of living and does not account for government assistance programs, such as SNAP. The cost of living is cheaper in 54 of the 56 cities on the list than it is on average across the country. In such cases, low incomes may be more manageable.

The top 10 cities with the highest number of residents living in poverty are:

10 – Pine Bluff, AR (25.7% Poverty rate; 1.4% Latino population)

9 – Valdosta, GA (26.6% Poverty rate; 5% Latino population)

8 – Merced, CA (26.7% Poverty rate; 48.8% Latino population)

7 – Greenville, NC (26.8% Poverty rate; 4.3% Latino population)

6 – Athens-Clarke County, GA (27.1% Poverty rate; 10.6% Latino population)

5 – Las Cruces, NM (27.1% Poverty rate; 56.7% Latino population)

4 – Visalia-Porterville, CA (27.6% Poverty rate; 47.5% Latino population)

3 – McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX (31.5% Poverty rate; 86.1% Latino population)

2 – Laredo, TX (31.8% Poverty rate; 95.3% Latino population)

1 – Brownsville-Harlingen (32.4% Poverty rate; 89.9% Latino population)

You can view the complete list of 56 cities here.

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