Poverty rate falls

In recent years, the poverty rate has fallen, both in the United States, and in most of the world. In the U.S., the poverty rate recently fell from 11.1% to 10.6%. In Asia’s poorer countries, the poverty rate has also fallen. “The national poverty rate in the Philippines has fallen below 10 percent for the first time, dropping from 15.5 percent in 2023 to 9.7 percent in 2025. The Philippines sets its poverty line at a household income of about $237 per month, the estimated amount a family of five needs to afford their food, shelter, healthcare, education, clothing, utilities, and transportation,” reports The Doomslayer. 

The Philippines and America have very different definitions of poverty. A person below the poverty line in the U.S. typically lives better than most people above the poverty line in the Philippines, especially if the poor American receives food stamps, housing subsidies, and Medicaid. Such public assistance is not taken into account in deciding whether people are below the poverty line in the U.S., even though such public assistance eliminates the biggest challenges associated with poverty.

The poorest country in Asia is East Timor, where the official poverty rate has fallen to about 42% of the population. When it first became independent, most of its population suffered from absolute poverty and hunger. People below the poverty line in East Timor are often hungry: At least 19% of East Timor’s population are malnourished, and 47% of children under age 5 are stunted (too short for their age). Households below the poverty line in East Timor generally include at least one hungry, malnourished person.

The South China Morning Post reports that

“The Philippines has cut its official poverty rate to below 10 per cent for the first time, a milestone officials hailed as proof that millions of Filipinos are climbing the economic ladder…

The Philippine Statistics Authority said poverty incidence fell to 9.7 per cent in 2025 – or about 11 million people – down from 15.5 per cent, or 17.5 million, in 2023. It marked the first time the national individual poverty rate had fallen into single digits.

Meanwhile, the percentage of families living in poverty also dropped from 10.9 per cent to 6.4 per cent over the same period.

The milestone comes a month after the World Bank reclassified the Philippines as an upper-middle-income country, after its gross national income reached US$4,850 per capita – above the bank’s US$4,636 threshold.”

Global average life expectancy and income are at an all-time high. Life expectancy is expected to rise by 5 years by 2050.

On the other hand, hundreds of children were recently slaughtered in El Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state, where thousands of people have starved to death.

Most Americans below the poverty line live better than the average Western European, and possess things — like air conditioners, cable TV, and dryers — that many European households lack. Moreover, nearly half of Americans below the poverty line own their own home, with an average of three bedrooms.

There are plenty of people below the American poverty line who aren’t really poor, and a smaller number of working people above the poverty line who are indeed quite poor. The U.S. poverty line is a very arbitrary measure seemingly designed to justify lots of spending on welfare and social services for “disadvantaged” people who aren’t really poor, spending that generates jobs for government employees (and government-subsidized non-profits) who provide welfare and handouts.

Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation explained a decade ago how many people below the poverty line aren’t really poor at all:

There is a wide chasm between the public’s concept of poverty and “poverty” as it is defined by the Census Bureau. The public generally thinks of poverty as . . . homelessness, or malnutrition and chronic hunger. In reality, the vast majority of those identified as poor by the annual census report did not experience significant material deprivation.

In a recent Rasmussen poll, adults agreed (by a ratio of six to one) that “a family that is adequately fed and living in a house or apartment that is in good repair” is not poor. By that simple test, about 80 percent of the Census Bureau’s “poor” people would not be considered poor by their fellow Americans. . . a ‘poor’ child in American is far more likely to have a widescreen plasma television, cable or satellite TV, a computer and an Xbox or TiVo in his home than he is to be hungry. . .In 2009, the U.S. Department of Agriculture asked parents living in poverty this question: “In the last 12 months, were [your] children ever hungry but you just couldn’t afford more food?” Some 96 percent of poor parents responded “no”: Their children never had been hungry because of a lack of food resources at any time in the previous year. . .

Here are more surprising facts about Americans defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau. . .Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning. Fully 92 percent of poor households have a microwave; two-thirds have at least one DVD player and 70 percent have a VCR. Nearly 75 percent have a car or truck; 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks. . .Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television…. More than half of poor families with children have a video game system such as Xbox or PlayStation. . . A third have a widescreen plasma or LCD TV. . .At a single point in time, only one in 70 poor persons is homeless. The vast majority of the houses or apartments of the poor are in good repair; only 6 percent are over-crowded. The average poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Sweden, France, Germany or the United Kingdom. . .Forty-two percent of all poor households own their home; on average, it’s a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.