INTRODUCTION AND KEY FINDINGS
• In 2022, nearly 500,000 more New Yorkers lived in poverty than the year prior. More than 1.5 million adult New Yorkers (23%) and nearly 420,000 children (25%) in New York City lived in poverty in 2022, up from 1.2 million adults (18%) and 260,000 children (15%) in 2021. • The increase in poverty between 2021 and 2022 follows the expiration of historic pandemic-era policy interventions that helped stabilize rates of adult poverty and reduced child poverty to record lows during the pandemic. • New Yorkers living below the poverty line were not the only ones struggling to get by in 2022 – more than 4.6 million New Yorkers (56%) had incomes below 200% of the poverty line in 2022 and a third (33%) classified as having low incomes, or incomes between 100-200% of the poverty line. • New Yorkers with incomes below 200% of the poverty line were twice as likely to experience difficulty paying for housing, energy and telephone bills, and food than those above 200% of the line, with almost 1 in 5 (19%) reporting that they lived paycheck-to-paycheck in the past 12 months. • Still, in 2022, government transfers and tax credits cut the adult poverty rate in New York City by 27% and the child poverty rate by 41%, keeping more than half a million adults and almost 300,000 children above the poverty line. These effects are less substantial than those in 2021, when govern- ment transfers and tax credits cut the adult poverty rate by 45% and the child poverty rate by 68%. • Rates of material hardship in New York City also increased in 2022, as roughly 29% of adults and 31% of children experienced material hardship – up from 24% and 26% in 2021, respectively. • In 2022, nearly a quarter (24%) of adult New Yorkers experienced a health problem, defined as reporting poor health or having a work-limiting health condition. • More than half (52%) of adult New Yorkers faced at least one form of disadvantage (poverty, material hardship, or health problems) in 2022.
2 THE STATE OF POVERTY AND DISADVANTAGE IN NEW YORK CITY VOL. 6
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