This month, the Census Department released its annual reports on income, poverty and health insurance in 2024. The main message was that things were more or less unchanged from the year before; the overall poverty rate was stable, and the income and insurance numbers were much the same as 2023.

But there were some trends in the report that are worth our attention.

Black Incomes Were Down, Poverty Rate Up

The median income for Black households fell 3.3 percent in 2024, while the number of Black people in poverty increased 2.2 percent.

Gender Gap Grows

The numbers show that women working full time earned just 80.9 percent of what men made in 2024,  down from 82.7 percent the year before. This is the second year in a row that the gender gap has widened.

The National Women’s Law Center notes that the gap is especially wide for Black women: “The Census data shows that Black women working full time, year-round in 2024 were paid 65 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men, compared to 66 cents in 2023 and 69 cents in 2022.”

Income Inequality Growing

The new Census data show that incomes for those in the top 10 percent increased 4.2 percent from 2023. Earnings at the bottom and middle were essentially unchanged.

The pattern over the last 15 years is stark. As noted by economist Heather Long, incomes for the top 10 percent increased 28 percent, middle incomes grew 18 percent, and incomes in the bottom 10 percent grew 12 percent.

Child Poverty’s Racial Gaps

The expansion of the child tax credit in 2021 led to historic drops in child poverty. When Congress allowed those policies to expire, child poverty doubled.

The new Census report finds that the poverty rates for different racial or ethnic groups “were not significantly different from 2023.” But after narrowing in 2021, the gaps between Black and Hispanic poverty and White/Asian poverty remain considerable.

The Coming Wave of Budget Cuts Are Designed to Hit the Poor the Hardest

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) trades spending cuts – specifically targeted to Medicaid and SNAP food assistance programs –  for the extension of tax breaks that will mostly benefit the wealthy. Those cuts will phase in over a matter of years; several million will become uninsured, and poverty and income inequality will likely increase.

The political calculations of the law – delaying Medicaid cuts until after the 2026 midterms, for example – are intended to delay the effects, but eventually those impacts will show up in the data.