Data story · October 21, 2026 · All data stories
The link between education and poverty is one of the most consistent patterns in the public data. It shows up in every state.
The picture
Each dot is one state or the District of Columbia (51 dots per row). The row shows the share of adults 25 and over living below the poverty line by their education, and the dark line marks the U.S. rate. The dots are not ordered or labeled by state.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates (poverty status by educational attainment, adults 25 and over). Puerto Rico is left out. Estimates have margins of error that are larger in small states.
What stands out
- The order never flips. In 51 of 51 states, the poverty rate falls at every step up: less than high school, high school, some college, bachelor’s or higher.
- The U.S. rates are 24.2%, 14.4%, 9.8% and 4.5% across the four groups, so adults without a high school diploma are more than 5 times as likely to live in poverty as those with a bachelor’s degree or more.
- The gap is large in every state. State rates for adults with a bachelor’s degree or more run from 3.1% to 6.3%; for adults without a high school diploma, from 14.6% to 38.5%. Even the highest state rate in the bachelor’s row is below the lowest state rate in the less-than-high-school row. Places also differ a good deal from one another within each education group, so where someone lives matters too.
What this does and does not say
These are associations in group data. Education is linked to many other things, including age, family background, health and where people live, so the chart does not show what a degree or diploma would do for any one person. Poverty rates also depend on household size and the cost of living, which the official poverty line does not adjust for. The chart is a reminder of how consistent the pattern is, not an instruction about what to study.
How we computed this
For each state and the District of Columbia we use the Census Bureau’s published poverty rate for each education group. Ranges describe the states, and states are not weighted by population.
MajorPays shares information, not advice. Figures are group statistics from U.S. government sources, not predictions for any person, and MajorPays does not rank schools or places. See our methodology.