What is Albany’s Poverty Rate?!

“Poverty is a risk that up to 40% of Americans face, a result of volatile and unstable earnings in a weakly regulated labor market. Work isn't a golden ticket out of poverty, as evident from the millions of full-time workers who are poor, part-time workers who are poor, as well as very poor households who get nearly half their income from earnings.”

Dr. Kathryn Anne Edwards, Labor Economist

We wanted to analyze Albany’s poverty rate to answer some basic questions:

What is Albany’s poverty rate?
How has the poverty rate changed over the last decade?
What is the poverty rate among Black or African American population?
How does Albany’s poverty rate compare against other New York cities and against the State of New York’s rate?

The US Census Bureau analyzes poverty as a part of the decennial Census (most recently in 2020). The Census Bureau updates poverty data on a yearly basis for larger cities as a part of the American Community Survey (ACS). We decided to exclusively examine the ACS data from 2013 through 2023 for Albany, Schenectady and Syracuse, and that we would use New York State poverty data as a comparison.

If you are interested in the details of how the Census Bureau examines poverty as a category of demographic study, there is a good writeup here.

Analyzing albany's poverty

Our analysis uses 2013-2023 Census Bureau ACS Poverty data. Anyone can download this data for free using the Census Bureau’s data tools. As an example, this link lets you examine 2022 ACS poverty data for New York State, Albany, Syracuse and Schenectady. Note that we did not download data for 2020 as that is a decennial census year. We decided to exclusively use yearly ACS data for this comparison.

After we download the data we can examine specific tranches of the data, for example this simple chart shows poverty by year for New York State, Albany and our two comparison cities. We also included the margin of error for Albany’s poverty statistics.

Importantly, when using ACS data for analysis it is important to understand that the yearly ACS data is created using sampling techniques. The Census Bureau speaks to the ACS methodologies and margin of error. The short version is that ACS data can be thought of as less accurate than a decennial census, however it generally is directionally correct.

albany's poverty - 2013-2023

Let’s look at a graph of Albany’s poverty rate from 2013 through 2023, examining the poverty rate for the entire population. We will also contrast Albany’s poverty rate against that of Syracuse, Schenectady and New York State.

New York State’s poverty rate has decreased over the time period from 16.0 to 14.2%. If Albany mirrored New York State we would expect to see a decline as well. Measuring the start and end point of the study we do see a decline in Albany’s poverty rate from 25.7 to 21.1%. Every yearly estimate does have a margin of error that ranges from ±3.8 (2013 and 2015) to ±5.3% (2022, when most analysis was happening during the COVID pandemic).

We do see a dramatic spike in Albany’s poverty rate during the pandemic in 2022 that then returns to pre-pandemic levels in 2023’s data. Curiously Schenectady saw the inverse, a poverty rate trough in 2022 with a significant increase in 2023. Syracuse - a city with poverty rates higher than Albany - saw a small decline in poverty with a 2023 uptick.

Albany’s Poverty Rate - Black or African American population

Albany’s Black or African American population (the official Census Bureau terminology) is nearly 30% of Albany’s overall population. We can study poverty by year in Albany’s Black population and compare this to the Black poverty rate for New York State, Schenectady and Syracuse.

A table view looks like this (above) and graph view (below). Note that the Census Bureau’s margin of error is higher when estimating the Black population for Albany versus examining the entire population.

There are a few things that we can notice. New York State’s Black poverty rate is gradually trending down, from 24.3 to 20.5%. Both Albany and Schenectady’s poverty rates show significant up and down swings at different times during the study period, with some of the highest variability from 2019 through 2023. Albany’s Black poverty rate seems to spike during the pandemic and then go down dramatically in 2023.

At this point we should look carefully at Albany’s Black poverty rate, examining the data including the margin of error. As shown in the table above, the Black poverty rate has a high margin of error, for example, the 2022 estimate has a ±13.1% margin of error. Below, we can graph three years of estimates, showing the estimate and the high/low that builds in the margin of error. For example, in 2022 the Black poverty estimate was 37%; with the margin of error the poverty rate could range from 24% to 50%.

Evaluating just these three years, one possible explanation is that the 2021 and 2022 ACS overestimated Albany’s Black poverty rate, and the 2023 underestimated Albany’s Black poverty rate. It is also possible (but not probable) that Albany’s Black poverty rate in actuality was halved between 2022 and 2023, from 37% to 19%.

So what is Albany’s Black poverty rate in reality and has the rate gone down? There are two ways of answering this question:

We would want to analyze the 2024 and 2025 ACS poverty data when it comes out to see where the trend is going and if these estimates have a lower margin of error.
We can also eyeball the data and make a guesstimate that a) Black poverty was in the low- to mid-30s a decade ago and b) it is likely that the poverty rate has declined to the mid- to high-20s a decade later.

Albany’s Poverty Rate - Hispanic or Latino origin (any race)

Lastly, we examined ACS poverty data for Albany’s population of Hispanic or Latino origin; approximately 10% of Albany’s population is Hispanic. Unfortunately, for many of the study years (2013-2023) the Census Bureau did not have a large enough sample and/or high enough confidence to publish Hispanic or Latino origin poverty data. Poverty data is only available for five years during our study period, and the margins of error are very high, e.g. 2021’s margin of error is ±19.3%. We don’t have enough confidence in the data that we can tell any sensible story.

Conclusions & Additional Examinations

We can go back to our additional questions - what did we learn?

1. What is Albany’s poverty rate?

Albany’s poverty rate can generally be thought of as being in the low 20%

2. What is the poverty rate among Albany's Black or African American population?

Albany’s Black poverty rate trends approximately 6-8% higher than the overall poverty rate

3. How does Albany’s poverty rate compare against other New York cities and against the State of New York’s rate?

Albany’s poverty rate is higher than New York State’s poverty rate and is lower than Syracuse’s poverty rate. Albany’s poverty rate is challenging to compare against Schenectady; while there is some directionality that is similar, the poverty estimates for both cities can have a high degree of variability.

4. How has the poverty rate changed over the last decade?

Albany’s poverty rate has likely seen a small decline in the last decade in both overall population and Black populations. Albany’s poverty decline generally parallels the poverty decline of New York State; there is nothing in the data that suggests that Albany has a materially different trajectory, better or worse.

We have a few follow-up topics:
1. With this foundational analysis we can add 2024 ACS data when it becomes available later in 2025.

2. In the future we will examine poverty rate using other dimensions including educational attainment and employment status.

Questions or comments? email us at AlbanyDataStories@gmail.com

Albany Data Stories