Despite experiencing one of the sharpest upticks in median income last year, San Antonio remains the nation’s third-most impoverished metro area, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released this week.
About 13% of San Antonians lived in poverty between 2023 and 2024, ranking the area below only Detroit and Houston when compared to the nation’s other 25 largest metros. Even so, the city’s poverty rate has declined slightly since 2023, according to the Census numbers.
The new data comes despite the San Antonio metro logging a 3.7% increase in median household income during that same time, reaching $78,100. That’s among the nation’s fastest rates for wage growth, according to the Census Bureau.
David Vequis, a business professor at Incarnate Word, told TV station News 4 SA that the high poverty rate can be traced back to its poorly educated workforce.
“In terms of the total population of San Antonio, we don’t have enough people in the degrees or the areas of the skill sets that are needed to attract high-wage employers,” Vequis told the news outlet.
San Antonio’s generational poverty problem has also been in the news due to Project Marvel.
In an Instagram post this week, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones pointed to the city’s high poverty rate as a reason to complete additional economic impact research on the proposed $4 billion sports-and- entertainment district.
“Due diligence is not anti-progress, it’s anti-poverty,” the mayor said in the post.
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