the official poverty rate is the percentage of the population
The Population of Poverty USA. In 2015, 43.1 million people lived in Poverty USA. That means the poverty rate for 2015 was 13.5%. The 2015 poverty rate was 1.0 percentage point higher than in 2007, the year before the 2008 recession. This is the first year in five years that the number of people in poverty has decreased from the previous yearâs poverty estimates. Source: U.S. Census Bureau; Income and Poverty in the United States: 2015.