New Jersey’s official poverty rate tells one story.
Two recent affordability reports tell another.
According to Legal Services of New Jersey’s Poverty Research Institute, the latest Census data shows that about 859,000 New Jerseyans lived below the federal poverty level in 2024, or 9.2% of the state population relatively stable from 9.7% in 2023. More important than the slight change, LSNJ points out that more than 2.2 million New Jersey residents experiencing financial hardship fall through the cracks when the federal poverty line is applied.
Using its True Poverty Level, LSNJ estimates that 3,089,095 New Jersey residents (~33% of the state population), lived below True Poverty in 2024- more than three times the federal snapshot.
The United Ways of NJ 2026 State of ALICE looks at households and concluded something similar – of 3,543,650 NJ households, 345,620 (~10%) were below the federal poverty level and another 1,050,032 (~30%) were ALICE, meaning they earned above the federal poverty level but not enough to afford basic expenses in the county where they live.
When combined, 1,395,652 New Jersey households, or 39%, were below the ALICE Threshold.
While the two reports aren’t measuring the same thing (LSNJ counts individuals, ALICE counts households) both point to the same conclusion: the federal poverty level is too low to describe financial hardship in New Jersey.
LSNJ’s argument is direct and simple – you can’t apply the same threshold across state economies that vary significantly. According to their report, New Jersey had the highest average prices in the Northeast and the third-highest in the nation in 2024, with a regional price parity score of 108.8, compared with a national average of 100.
ALICE shows the same gap in household-budget terms. In 2024, the federal poverty level was $15,060 for a single adult and $31,200 for a family of four. But the ALICE Household Survival Budget in New Jersey was $43,284 for a single adult and $115,872 for a family of four with two adults, an infant and a preschooler.
That ALICE budget is the bare minimum needed – not a comfortable middle-class lifestyle as it includes household basics, but not things most families do/buy (eating out, birthday presents, new clothes, new appliances, emergency savings, debt payments, education savings, saving up to buy a house or saving up for retirement).
Meaning that many households above the official poverty line are still one rent increase, car repair, medical bill, utility bill or child-care cost away from crisis.
Looking just at housing:
LSNJ notes that, in 2024, the federal poverty threshold for a three-person family with two children was $25,273. The annual median gross rent for a two-bedroom apartment in New Jersey was $22,620, leaving only $2,653 before taxes to cover everything else for the entire year.
It also found that New Jersey had the third-highest rental costs in the US in 2024, behind only California and Massachusetts. The average two-bedroom rent in New Jersey went from $1,443 in 2019 to $1,885 in 2024, a 30.6% increase. Over the same period, the federal poverty threshold for a three-person family with two children rose by only 22.7%.
The ALICE report found that 73% of renter households below the ALICE Threshold spent at least 30% of income on rent and utilities and that 44% of renter households below the threshold spent at least half of income on rent and utilities.
Among homeowners below the threshold, 70% were housing cost burdened.
LSNJ’s True Poverty data shows that among renter households below the True Poverty Level, 77.6% were cost burdened and 46.6% were severely cost burdened.
LSNJ cites New Jersey’s 2025 Point-In-Time Count, which identified 13,748 people experiencing homelessness statewide, a 54% increase since 2016.
The official poverty measure also misses the scale of hardship among children.
LSNJ found that the federal poverty level counted 235,893 New Jersey children as poor in 2024 while its True Poverty Level counted 823,920 children, or 40.8% of all children in the state. That means 588,027 children experiencing deprivation were missing from federal poverty statistics.
For working-age adults, LSNJ found that 461,289 were counted below the federal poverty level, while 1,679,927 were below True Poverty. For residents 65 and older, 161,847 were counted below the federal poverty level, while 585,248 were below True Poverty.
ALICE points out that we aren’t just talking about people who are unemployed.
ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, meaning households earning above the federal poverty level but below the income needed to afford basic costs. Workers in households below the ALICE Threshold include folks like child care providers, food service workers, cashiers, personal care aides, delivery drivers and others who keep local economies functioning.
In 2024, the ALICE report found that 44% of full-time workers in New Jersey did not earn enough to afford the ALICE Household Survival Budget for one adult and one school-age child. It also found that a wage of $20 per hour was not enough to support that budget in any New Jersey county.
The report found financial hardship across all demographic groups, but not evenly. In 2024, 69% of households headed by someone under age 25 and 49% of households headed by someone 65 or older were below the ALICE Threshold. The rate was 55% for Black households and 55% for Hispanic households. Among families with children, 75% of single-female-headed households and 61% of single-male-headed households were below the threshold.
LSNJ’s True Poverty brief also found sharp racial and ethnic disparities. Hispanic or Latino New Jerseyans had the highest True Poverty rate in 2024 at 54%, followed by Black residents at 44.1%. The True Poverty rates for non-Hispanic white and Asian residents were lower, at 23.2% and 20.3%.
Among children, the disparities were even greater. LSNJ found that 62% of Hispanic or Latino children and 58.4% of Black children lived below True Poverty in 2024, compared with 25.1% of non-Hispanic white children and 20.5% of Asian children.
The TL;DR version….
LSNJ says about 33% of residents lived below True Poverty.
ALICE says about 39% of households were below the income needed to afford basic costs.
New Jersey’s affordability crisis is much larger than the official poverty rate suggests.
ALICE: https://nj21st.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/state-of-alice-report-new-jersey-2026.pdf
LSNJ Report: https://nj21st.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/d4376256-7510-4af0-a848-278b1ab811c9.pdf
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