• People of color have experienced poverty at higher rates compared to white populations in the US from 1980 to 2020. 
• In 2020, Native American and Black people had the highest share of people living below 100 percent of the poverty level. 
• Across the listed poverty levels, the Native American female population had the highest share of those below the poverty level in the US, while the white male population had the lowest share.
• Across all states, Mississippi had the highest share of residents living below 200 percent of the poverty level, while New Hampshire had the lowest at 41 percent and 19 percent respectively.

Poverty remains high in the United States because of various trends including wage stagnation among lower paying jobs, cutbacks in social protection programs, and deindustrialization. People of color, particularly Latinx and Black Americans, continue to suffer from poverty at much higher rates than White Americans. This disparity is caused by various historical factors such as racial segregation and policies that banned people of color from accessing education and higher paid professions. Ongoing factors, like decades of disinvestment in infrastructure and social programs, discriminatory hiring practices and disparities in generational wealth, also contribute to poverty.

• Adopt targeted local hiring policies and measures that remove barriers to employment and services.
• Provide affordable high-quality preschool and childcare for low-income families.
• Raise the floor on low-wage work by increasing the minimum wage (ideally to at least $15/hour) or enacting living-wage laws, requiring paid sick days, ending wage theft, strengthening workers' rights to organize, and ensuring fair scheduling.
• Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and protect against predatory, high-cost financial service providers.
• Prevent displacement, which has been shown to cause poverty, through tenant protections like just cause eviction ordinances, legal assistance, Tenant Opportunity to Purchase policies (TOPA) and Community Opportunity to Purchase policies (COPA), and rent control.
• At the federal level, institute a federal jobs guarantee, enact a $15/hour minimum wage for all workers, guarantee workers’ right to organize at scale, set aside a share of public contracts for businesses owned by people of color to mirror area demographics, and reform the Community Reinvestment Act to expand access to fair financial products and services for entrepreneurs of color.

• Reports: How COVID-19 Is Affecting Black and Latino Families’ Employment and Financial Well-Being; Causes of Wage Stagnation; 5 Reasons Why Strengthening the EITC and CTC Is the Kind of Tax Reform America Needs; Building Shared Prosperity in America’s Cities
• Data: Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker (Low-Income Earnings); KIDS COUNT; Living Wage Calculator; Family Budget Calculator; The Opportunity Atlas