The rich got richer in 2025. The poorest households? Not so much
The rich got richer in 2025. The poorest households? Not so much
Ignacio Calderon, USA TODAYFri, September 18, 2026 at 10:02 AM UTC
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Household income grew last year, but not for everyone. New U.S. Census Bureau data shows income for the top 10% climbed 1.7% in 2025, while earnings for the bottom 10% held essentially flat, widening the dollar gap between these income groups.
Overall, median household income rose 2.6% in 2025, while the poverty rate stayed at 13.1% and the share of people without insurance for the entire year was 7.9%, according to the data providing the most comprehensive account of income, poverty, and insurance coverage. The figures released Sept. 15, come with a lag and do not yet capture the effects of Trump administration policy changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid.
The topline income gains mask a widening divide. Since 1967, household income for the top has risen 121%, while growth for the bottom was 56%. This century alone, top earners saw 33% growth, while the bottom lagged at 8%.
That means that for every dollar earned by the 10% at the top, the bottom 10% made eight cents in 2025, a number that has gone down from the 11 cents in 1967.
In 2025, about 3 in 10 households made under $50,000, even as many Americans continue to describe stretched budgets and rising costs.
Economists say the unequal growth between the top and bottom creates an economy that works better for some than others, leaving lower-income households further from closing the gap even in the year of overall growth, let alone making investments like buying a home.
That imbalance becomes starker when looking at the distribution of aggregated money income in 2025. The top 20% reported more than half of the total income in 2025, while the bottom 20% took home just 3%, according to Census data. The top 5% of households alone accounted for nearly a quarter of the nation’s total income in 2025.
"Something that has been true for decades is that there's a massive college wage premium because college graduates do substantially better than others, and on the other hand, if you didn't graduate from high school, your likely outcomes are very bad," said Steven Durlauf, a professor and director of the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility at the University of Chicago. "Educational inequality begets income inequality."
For every dollar earned by a median householder with a bachelor’s degree or higher, those with only a high school degree made 44 cents, and those without a high school diploma made 27 cents.
Income rose, but racial gap persists
Median household income, which shows the midpoint of income distribution, was $87,460 in 2025, the highest on record. For every dollar of income from a median White household, Hispanic households made 76 cents and Black households made 62 cents. Asian households made 1.31 dollars for every dollar.
"If you're comparatively disadvantaged, upward mobility is less probable for Blacks than Whites," Durlauf said. "The other fact is that downward mobility, if you're doing well, is higher for Blacks than whites – so the ability to lock in success turns out to be complicated."
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The racial income gap can also translate into a housing gap. People of color have a significantly lower homeownership rate, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
As housing prices grow faster than incomes, that has become a barrier across the board. In the 1990s, the median sales price of a home was 3.2 times the median household income. In 2025, that number grew to nearly 5 times the income.
That year also saw a record low share of first-time buyers, USA TODAY previously reported.
The new data showed an improvement in closing the gender gap. In 2025, female workers earned 84 cents for every dollar a male worker earned, up from 81 cents in 2024.
Poverty held steady, but experts forecast numbers to get worse
In 2025, the supplemental poverty measure, which includes some government assistance programs and health expenses in its calculations, stayed about the same, at 13.1%. The official poverty rate, an outdated measure, went down by nearly half a point to 10.2%, while child poverty fell to 13.4%.
Experts said they expect things to get worse for those with lower incomes.
To partially offset the tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s signature bill, SNAP will lose about $190 billion in funding. Medicaid, which covers those with low income, is set to lose about $920 billion, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. The cuts could mean millions without health care coverage.
In 2025, Medicaid health coverage went down 0.5 points, which was masked by a 0.6-point increase in Medicare (which was partly attributed to growth in people age 65 and older rather than a change in coverage).
"There were so many policies that happened in the pandemic that were helping to shore up people, particularly at the lower end, and those things have all disappeared. And now there's going to be more cuts," said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
"Those things aren't showing up in the data yet, but I think this is a sign of more trouble to come," Gould said.
According to the Census Bureau’s latest numbers, SNAP pulled 3.1 million people out of poverty and medical expenses pushed 7.7 million people into poverty in 2025. Preliminary data shows that in May 2026, SNAP enrollment was down 13.5% year-over-year while Medicaid enrollment declined by 6%.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The rich got richer in 2025. The poorest households? Not so much
Source: “AOL Money”
