Cleveland’s poverty rate dropped to 24.1% in 2025 from 28.3% the prior year, according to a Center for Community Solutions analysis of U.S. Census data. Emily Campbell, the center’s president and CEO, said the rate was the lowest since the 1980s and that the city was trending in a better direction. The analysis estimated that slightly more than 85,000 of the city’s 353,400 residents lived below the poverty threshold, which it put at $32,649 for a family of four.
The improvement was uneven. White Clevelanders’ poverty rate fell to 10.5%, a 32.6% decline, while the overall rate declined about 14%. The Black poverty rate was 28.2%, down about 17%, but remained the second highest among large U.S. cities after Detroit. Hispanic/Latino poverty was 32.6% and essentially unchanged, while Asian poverty rose to 44.7%, about a 10% increase. The analysis placed Cleveland on top-10 worst lists for Asian and Hispanic/Latino poverty among large cities. Cleveland still ranked second among large cities for overall poverty, behind Detroit; the national rate was 11.8%.
Campbell attributed the racial gaps partly to racism and to barriers involving education, employment and transportation. Tyler Sinclair, a spokesman for Mayor Justin Bibb, cited decades of disinvestment in minority neighborhoods and described city efforts on housing, workforce development and industrial site readiness. Harry Kamdar of Asian Service in Action called for a statewide commission, and José C. Feliciano Sr. of the Hispanic Roundtable called the Hispanic poverty figure a wake-up call.