Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

New Hampshire Has Had the Lowest Estimated Poverty Rate of Any State in Every Census Estimate Since 2007. In Coos County, the Rate Is Nearly Double the State’s.

The Census Bureau’s county estimates for 2024 put the median household income at $119,559 in Rockingham County and $59,499 in Coos. Adjusted for inflation, the bureau found a statistically significant change in median income since 2007 in three of the state’s 10 counties, and one of the three went down.

By the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate, 7.3 percent of New Hampshire residents lived below the federal poverty line in 2024, about 100,256 people. The national rate was 12.1 percent. No other state, and not the District of Columbia, had an estimated rate as low. New Hampshire has held that spot in every set of state estimates the bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program has published for the years 2007 through 2024, 18 in a row. In 13 of those years, the state’s 90 percent confidence interval sat entirely below the next state’s. In the other five, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2020, the two ranges touched or overlapped, so the lead was not firm.

The state’s median household income in 2024 was $100,364, meaning half of its households took in more and half took in less. The national median was $81,604. New Hampshire’s figure was the sixth-highest estimate among the states and the District of Columbia, behind the District, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Hawaii. The confidence intervals for the first three sit entirely above New Hampshire’s. The intervals for Maryland, Hawaii, California, Washington and Alaska overlap it, so the order among those six states is not firm.

Inside the state, the numbers spread out. Rockingham County, on the Seacoast and the Massachusetts line, had the highest median household income, $119,559, and the lowest poverty rate, 5.3 percent. Coos County, the state’s northernmost, had the lowest median, $59,499, and the highest poverty rate, 13.8 percent. Rockingham’s median was about twice Coos’s. Coos’s poverty rate was about 1.9 times the state’s.

Ten counties, one statewide number

The counties line up in roughly the same order on both measures, with exceptions. Strafford County had the third-lowest median household income, $82,816, but a poverty rate of 8.6 percent, in the middle of the pack. Grafton County had the second-highest poverty rate, 9.6 percent, with a median of $85,260.

Rates and head counts tell different stories. Hillsborough County’s poverty rate, 7.0 percent, was below the state’s. It still had the most people in poverty of any county, an estimated 29,420, about 29 percent of the statewide total and more than seven times the count in Coos. Sullivan County had the fewest, 3,768.

What the estimates are

The figures come from the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program, known as SAIPE. It is not a head count and not a single survey. For states and counties, the bureau says, it models income and poverty estimates “by combining survey data with population estimates and administrative records.” The inputs it lists include single-year American Community Survey estimates, data summarized from federal income tax returns, the number of people receiving SNAP benefits and Supplemental Security Income, and personal income estimates from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The program exists to steer money. “The main objective of this program is to provide estimates of income and poverty for the administration of federal programs and the allocation of federal funds to local jurisdictions,” the bureau says. The 2024 estimates were released in January 2026.

Every estimate comes with a 90 percent confidence interval, the range the bureau uses to show its uncertainty. The bureau’s advice: “the larger a 90% confidence interval for a particular estimate, the more caution is required when using the estimate.” Small counties carry wide ranges. Coos County’s poverty rate of 13.8 percent has an interval of 11.3 to 16.3 percent. The statewide rate’s interval runs from 6.9 to 7.7.

What “in poverty” means

The bureau counts a family as poor when its total money income before taxes falls below a threshold set by family size and the ages of its members. If the family is under the line, every person in it is counted as in poverty. There are 48 thresholds. For 2024, the weighted average threshold was $15,940 for one person living without relatives and $32,130 for a family of four; for four people including two related children under 18, it was $31,812.

Three limits matter for reading the county numbers. The thresholds are the same everywhere in the country; the bureau says they do not vary geographically. They are updated each year for inflation using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. And the income counted leaves out capital gains, tax credits and noncash benefits such as food stamps and housing subsidies. The bureau calls the thresholds “a statistical yardstick, not a complete description of what people and families need to live.”

The top and the bottom, year by year

Rockingham had the highest median household income of the 10 counties, and Coos the lowest, in every annual estimate from 2007 through 2024. Coos had the highest poverty rate in every one of those years. The ratio between the two medians has moved up and down without a steady direction, from about 1.7 to about 2.2. Both counties’ estimates carry margins of several thousand dollars, so a swing in the ratio from one year to the next says little by itself.

Seventeen years, adjusted for inflation

The bureau publishes its own test of which counties changed. Its January 2026 table compares each county’s 2007 and 2024 estimates, adjusts median household income for inflation, and lists only the counties whose change is statistically significant at the 90 percent confidence level.

Three New Hampshire counties are on the median income list. Carroll and Sullivan went up. Strafford went down. The other seven, Rockingham and Coos among them, are not listed, which means the bureau did not find a significant difference between their inflation-adjusted 2024 and 2007 medians. On the list for the poverty rate at all ages, no New Hampshire county appears. Statewide, the estimated poverty rate was 7.3 percent in 2007 and 7.3 percent in 2024.

The unadjusted figures point the same way. Before adjusting for inflation, Strafford’s median rose 39.5 percent, from $59,382 to $82,816, the smallest increase of any county. Carroll’s rose 83.8 percent and Sullivan’s 77.9 percent, the two largest.

How firm the order is

The bureau publishes a rough formula for judging whether one county’s or state’s estimate changed from one year to another. It warns against using that kind of shortcut to compare different places in the same year. All of its model-based estimates “are correlated because they depend on the same regression coefficients,” the bureau says, and county estimates are controlled to add up to the state’s. “SAIPE does not provide general guidance for comparing arbitrary pairs of states or counties.”

A reader can still look at whether the 90 percent intervals overlap. That is not a formal test, and overlapping ranges leave the order open. Coos County’s poverty interval, 11.3 to 16.3 percent, sits clear of the statewide range, 6.9 to 7.7, and of every county’s range except Grafton’s, 7.9 to 11.3. New Hampshire’s statewide range sits entirely below Utah’s, 8.1 to 8.7, the next lowest in 2024. Among the eight counties between Rockingham and Coos, the poverty-rate intervals overlap in all 28 possible pairings, so these estimates do not settle their order.

The bureau adds cautions of its own. Comparing SAIPE’s model-based figures with direct survey estimates, such as the American Community Survey’s, takes care, because the two are correlated. And comparing the number of people in poverty for 2010 and later with earlier years “is not generally recommended,” the bureau says, because the newer estimates incorporate the 2010 census as a baseline.

What the numbers leave out

A median says where the middle household sits, not how many households sit far from it. The poverty line does not move with local rents or prices, so the same line is drawn in Portsmouth and in Pittsburg. And the income the bureau counts includes earnings, Social Security, pensions and other cash, but not food assistance or housing help. Read with those limits, the 2024 estimates show a state with the lowest estimated poverty rate in the country and a northern county where the rate is nearly twice the state’s. As of October 2026, the 2024 figures, released in January 2026, are the latest county estimates the program has published.

— Granite State Report

Fact check

Editor’s note. Poverty and median household income figures are drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates state and county files for 2007 through 2024 and from the bureau’s January 2026 table of counties with statistically significant change. Definitions and thresholds are drawn from the bureau’s poverty measurement pages and its 2024 poverty thresholds table. State rankings, ratios, percent changes and interval comparisons are Granite State Report arithmetic from the bureau’s figures.

Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and runs a dated note at the top of the article identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.