Next month is National Poverty Awareness Month for 2024, so we’re going to get right to the point of the headline: the percentage of people living in poverty in Cobb County at the best current estimate is 8.3 percent, according to the 5-year American Community Survey released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau (more on that below).
Breaking that down further, the percentage of people living below the federal poverty rate was 6.2 percent among White residents, 9.7 percent of Black residents and 15.6 percent among Hispanic or Latino residents of any race. See the table below for the poverty rate of Cobb residents of other race and ethnicities.
The percentage of children in poverty in Cobb County is about 10.4 percent. So a little more than one in ten of the children in our county are in families below the poverty line, and are susceptible to all the attendant issues that come with poverty, from poor nutrition to barriers to educational achievement.
So how does Cobb County compare to the nation as a whole, Georgia’s rate, and neighboring counties?
Nationally the percentage of people living below the poverty line is 12.5 percent (so at 8.3 percent Cobb’s rate is lower). Georgia’s rate is 13.5 percent, a point higher than the national average, so Cobb compares even more favorably compared to Georgia’s overall rate.
Of adjacent counties, the rate in Fulton is 12.5 percent, Douglas is 11.6 percent, Paulding 6.7 percent, and Cherokee 6.6 percent.
What is the trend in Cobb County?
The current 5-year ACS ran from 2018 to 2022. Compared to the 5-year ACS ending in 2017 the poverty rate in the county has dropped, from 10.9 percent in 2017 to 8.3 percent for 2022.
According to a recent press release from the Census Bureau, the national rate declined significantly from the last non-overlapping ACS (2013-2017) and about a third of U.S. counties experienced declining poverty rate.
How is poverty distributed across Cobb…
Read the full article here
