When the U.S. Census Bureau released their 2024 one-year American Community Survey estimates back in September 2025, Emily Muttillo wrote an overview of what the new data showed about poverty in Cleveland. Broadly, the data showed that fewer Clevelanders are living in poverty, but Cleveland continues to be the second poorest large city in the United States.
Poverty in Cleveland has decreased in the city over the years.
Last Thursday, the Census released their 2024 five-year estimates, which use a larger sample size of data to make their estimates. This larger sample size allows the data to be analyzed at smaller geographies like census tracts, painting a much more detailed portrait of the city. With this newly released more comprehensive data, let’s look at poverty data in Cleveland.
Cleveland’s change in poverty rate wasn’t uniform across the city
As Emily’s original review highlighted, poverty has decreased in the city over the years. Comparing the five-year American Community Survey estimates from 2019 to 2024, the percentage of residents living in poverty in Cleveland decreased from 32.7 percent to 30.6 percent, which according to the Census’ statistical testing tool is a significant decrease.
Two percent may not feel “significant,” but in a city of over 365,000 people, two percent means thousands of fewer residents no longer living below the federal poverty line.
But this change in poverty rate wasn’t uniform across the city, and not all parts of the city experienced a decrease in poverty. Comparing the changes in poverty rates from 2020 to 2024 at the census tract level, provides much more detail in how poverty has shifted across the city.
As the data shows, despite Cleveland overall experiencing a decrease in poverty rates, some parts of the city saw significant increases in poverty at the tract level. This included tracts located in neighborhoods such as Fairfax/Central, West Boulevard, Mt. Pleasant, Stockyards/Clark-Fulton, and Lee-Seville.
Important caveats: overlaps, margins of error, local context
It may sound contradictory to take the time to compile this kind of information, to only then highlight its limitations. But knowing these limitations is necessary to understand how the estimates should be interpreted.
This map had to use 2020 five-year tract level estimates to make comparisons to the new 2024 data, because census tracts are redrawn every decade with the decennial census to account for population changes. Because of this redrawing, 2019 tracts aren’t comparable to tracts drawn after 2020. So, because 2020 and 2024 five-year estimates include one year of overlap, there is a risk of masking significant differences between the two time periods.
Census tract level estimates also tend to come with larger margins of error, compared to geographies like municipalities and counties.
One way to mitigate this is by using the statistical testing tool, which considers margins of error when identifying changes.
Finally, national statistics can only give general estimates of how things have changed, giving no information on why they’ve changed. When I see this data, I see a city full of neighborhoods, each of which are microcosms of change within their own borders. National level estimates can’t hope to tell the complete stories of the residents and workers and organizations nestled in each of those neighborhoods. Instead, it can just shed light on broad changes worth paying attention to.
