SPM poverty rate, 2025
What will the overall Supplemental Poverty Measure poverty rate be for calendar year 2025 as published by the U.S. Census Bureau?
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- 2 runs · 201 CDF points each
- ledger fact
- census.spm.all_people_poverty_rate.2025
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Overall SPM poverty is less CTC-sensitive than child poverty but more exposed to housing, medical, SNAP, and labor-market inputs. This 2025 target resolves roughly a year earlier than the prior 2026 SPM cell, making it a better near-term calibration target.
The model stays close to the 2022-2024 post-expansion plateau. Improved employment and real earnings pull down slightly; shelter and medical expense pressure keep the rate near the 2024 level.
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Draft is broadly publishable but needs clearer cited support for the 2025 inside-view update, an explicit model-prior statement, and a defensible interval basis.
- warning model_prior: The draft uses a 2022-2024 average as a persistence prior but does not explicitly state whether a time-series/model prior was used or ruled out.
- warning update: The movement from the 12.7 prior to 12.6 relies on claims about 2025 labor market, inflation, housing costs, transfers, and real income, but the cited public evidence is almost entirely Census release/table material rather than evidence for those 2025 conditions.
- warning interval: The 80% interval is asserted as roughly -1.0/+1.2 points but is not tied to realized volatility, backtest error, survey error, or a stated subjective uncertainty calculation.
disposition accepted: Review disposition: accepted the reviewer requests to name the persistence model prior, reduce the inside-view adjustment to a mostly persistence forecast, state an interval basis tied to recent non-pandemic SPM movement plus subjective measurement/policy uncertainty, and make the Census event-calendar URL the auditable resolver source.
disposition accepted: Review disposition: accepted the reviewer requests to name the persistence model prior, reduce the inside-view adjustment to a mostly persistence forecast, state an interval basis tied to recent non-pandemic SPM movement plus subjective measurement/policy uncertainty, and make the Census event-calendar URL the auditable resolver source.
disposition accepted: Review disposition: accepted the reviewer requests to name the persistence model prior, reduce the inside-view adjustment to a mostly persistence forecast, state an interval basis tied to recent non-pandemic SPM movement plus subjective measurement/policy uncertainty, and make the Census event-calendar URL the auditable resolver source.
The target is the Census Bureau first print for calendar-year 2025 all people under the Supplemental Poverty Measure, not a later revised table and not the official poverty measure.
Base-rate/reference-class anchor: the model prior is a simple persistence prior using the 2022-2024 post-pandemic-transfer-regime mean, about 12.7 percent, because the 2020 and 2021 pandemic-transfer years are poor comparators for 2025.
Level and momentum: because this run did not fetch a separate quantitative 2025 macro model, the inside-view update is deliberately small. I treat labor-market, inflation, shelter, medical-expense, and transfer assumptions as qualitative reasons for near-persistence rather than a strong directional override.
Counter-consideration: if 2025 shelter and medical out-of-pocket adjustments run hotter than cash-income gains, or if survey income measurement weakens, the rate could stay near 13.5 or above despite continued employment growth.
Point estimate: start from the 2022-2024 average (12.4+12.9+12.9)/3=12.73, apply only a small -0.1 persistence-plus-mild-income adjustment, and round to 12.6. For the 80% interval, recent non-pandemic-transfer year-to-year moves include 2022 to 2023 of +0.5 and 2023 to 2024 of 0.0, but SPM is sensitive to thresholds, expenses, survey measurement, and policy mechanics, so I use a subjective central interval of about -1.0/+1.2 percentage points around the point: 11.6 to 13.8.
Upside scenario: a weaker 2025 CPS ASEC income print, higher necessary expenses, or reduced effective transfers puts the first print around 13.8 to 14.3. Downside scenario: stronger lower-wage real earnings and stable transfer receipt bring it near 11.5. Outside-the-interval downside would require a broader income surprise or policy effect not evident from the baseline.
Review disposition: accepted the reviewer requests to name the persistence model prior, reduce the inside-view adjustment to a mostly persistence forecast, state an interval basis tied to recent non-pandemic SPM movement plus subjective measurement/policy uncertainty, and make the Census event-calendar URL the auditable resolver source.
Key drivers
- Refundable credit policy in 2025
- Rent and medical out-of-pocket costs
- Employment and wage growth
- SNAP and housing assistance
Resolution
- source
- U.S. Census Bureau, Poverty in the United States: 2025
- expected
- September 15, 2026
- rule
- Resolves to the official Supplemental Poverty Measure poverty rate for all people in calendar year 2025, as published in the Census Poverty in the United States report expected in September 2026.
- Data point
- census.spm.all_people_poverty_rate.2025
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