San Antonio has third-highest poverty rate of any big U.S. city, U.S. Census says

San Antonio has the third-highest poverty rate of any large U.S. city, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to the latest data from the annual American Community Survey, 18.7% of San Antonio’s 1.4 million residents lived in poverty last year — up nearly 2% from 2021. The picture is worse for Alamo City children: a quarter people under the age of 18 in the Alamo City live below the poverty line.

The Census Bureau defines poverty as an individual earning less than $13,590 or a family of four earning less than $29,960.

San Antonio’s poverty rate was both above the national average of 12.6% and the Texas average of 14%, according to the data.

Only Philadelphia, which has a poverty rate of 21.7%, and Houston, with a poverty rate of 20%, ranked higher than San Antonio on the list of impoverished big cities.

A separate Census Bureau analysis published last year found that 14.2% of residents in the San Antonio metro area, which also includes New Braunfels and other outlying cities and suburbs, lived in poverty, making the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro the most impoverished in the nation in 2021.

The nation’s large U.S. cities ranked by their 2022 U.S. Census Bureau poverty rates are:

1. Philadelphia at 21.7%
2. Houston at 20%
3. San Antonio at 18.7%
4. New York at 18.3%
5. Dallas at 17.8%
6. Chicago at 17.2%
7. Los Angeles at 16.8%
8. Phoenix at 13.9%
9. San Diego at 11.3%
10. Austin at 11%

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This article appears in Sep 6-19, 2023.