Rising rents are squeezing families’ finances and contributed to an uptick last year in child poverty in Rhode Island. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
Rhode Island had a higher percentage of children living in poverty in 2024 than any other New England state, according to an analysis of new census data.
Last year, the Ocean State’s child poverty rate rose from 13.4% to 16.3%, which made it the highest in New England. The Ocean State ranked 33rd nationally, according to new American Community Survey (ACS) data analyzed by Rhode Island KIDS COUNT.
The survey conducted annually by the U.S. Census Bureau counted 32,549 children experiencing poverty, up from the 26,901 children in 2023.
In 2024, the federal poverty threshold was defined as $26,650 for a family of three with one adult and two children, and $32,150 for a family of four with two adults and two children.
While this ACS data does not offer more granular breakdowns — like the percentage of children living in deep poverty, defined as living with less than half of the federal threshold — Rhode Island KIDS COUNT’s Executive Director Paige Parks said the news is still a cause for concern.
“I think sometimes in Rhode Island, we may feel like we are different than other states,” Parks said. “New England is very much known for doing well in many rankings, but this is where we are not, and we cannot ignore how many children are living in poverty in Rhode Island. I mean, we rank last in all of New England.”
KIDS COUNT examines the ACS estimates every year as one dataset which informs its annual Factbook, a compendium of data on children in Rhode Island and their wellbeing. The Rhode Island outfit of KIDS COUNT is one state-level affiliate of the nationwide Annie E. Casey Foundation, which collects data and produces similar reports in all 50 states.
Children who live in poverty — especially those who experience poverty for a long time — “have many negative outcomes into adulthood that follow them,” Parks said.
“It is the indicator that is connected to every single data point that we collect in the Factbook,” Parks said.
A 618-page consensus study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2019 titled “A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty” concluded that the evidence is strong and plentiful for childhood poverty causing negative outcomes, rather than just being correlated to them. The report’s recommendations include expanding public health insurance, Earned Income Tax Credits, and food stamps to improve children’s outcomes.
The academies also estimated that childhood poverty dents the U.S. GDP by about 4% to 5.4% every year, which amounted to about $800 billion to $1.1 trillion in 2018. The expert panel cited Impoverished children growing up to earn less as adults, incurring criminal justice system-related costs, or suffering poorer health and its negative consequences as contributing factors.
Housing and inflation are culprits
A number of pandemic-era social supports expired in 2024, but the end of these subsidies did not alone create Rhode Island’s jump in child poverty, Parks said.
“The cost of housing continues to increase. Inflation continues to increase, and the pay that families are receiving just is not keeping up with the increase in cost of living in Rhode Island,” Parks said. “That’s a major contributor to this.”
According to the Factbook, the average rent was $2,316 for a two-bedroom apartment in Rhode Island in 2024. A person needed to make about three times the minimum wage — $44.54 an hour, or about $92,671 a year — to afford that rent without being cost-burdened, defined as spending more than a third of income on housing. Overall, rents have risen by 17% since 2020.
A slightly more recent annual report from Washington D.C.-based Out of Reach found Rhode Island renters need to earn $31.71 an hour, equivalent to $65,954 a year, to afford the typical two-bedroom apartment priced at $1,614 a month. That report also noted that costs swing by region, with places like Aquidneck Island exhibiting pricier estimates.
A report released Tuesday by the Providence City Council’s Housing Crisis Task Force further underlines the housing market’s escalating costs and pressures in the capital city, where there have been more than 24,000 evictions since 2020.
“Nationally, households with children are twice as likely as other households to be threatened with eviction, and Black renters are about five times more likely to be evicted than white renters,” according to the KIDS COUNT Factbook.
Federal changes cause for concern
The survey data shows that the rate of children lacking health insurance also climbed modestly — a little under one percentage point — to 3.7% in 2024. That means about 8,087 young Rhode Islanders under 19 were without health coverage, although the state still ranks high nationally on this metric and is 12th overall.
A sea change in federal funding policies — including cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or colloquially as food stamps — has organizations like KIDS COUNT worried about the future.
Parks cited H.R. 1 — legislation perhaps best known by its sobriquet, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as an uneasy omen for programs affecting children’s welfare. Signed into law on July 4, the bill package installs new requirements for social programs.
An Urban Institute estimate from May 2025 found that about 13,000 Rhode Island families — including an approximate 3,000 families with children — would lose some or all SNAP benefits under the legislation’s expanded work reporting rules, for an average per-family monthly loss of about $227. Parks said these losses could then ripple to services like free school lunches and breakfasts, which often use federal markers like SNAP enrollment to determine eligibility.
“When we see national reports about how people in poverty are impacted by federal changes, I hope Rhode Islanders are not misled to think that they’re not talking about us,” Parks said. “We’re talking about us. We’re talking about our kids. We’re not doing great by our kids in poverty.”
Parks called for continued investment in Rhode Island Works, the state’s cash assistance program. Rhode Island Works now pays eligible families a monthly benefit that varies by income, housing situation and family size. Monthly earnings would include $701 for a family of two, $865 for a family of three, and $990 for a family of four.
Parks also said the state could improve its earned income tax credit of 16%, which lags compared to 40% in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
