Using U.S. Census American Community Survey data, this interactive shows which Texas counties have the lowest and highest rates of poverty, broken down by race.
Poverty levels are calculated by the U.S. Census based on a predetermined set of income thresholds that vary depending on the individual and/or family being surveyed. If a family's income is less than its assigned threshold, that family and everyone in it is considered to be impoverished. To learn more about how the Census Bureau calculates this measure, click here.
To use the interactive, select a race/ethnicity from the drop-down menu. Hover or tap on the map to learn more about the poverty breakdown of a particular county.
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Comments (4)
March 7 @ 7:28 a.m.
Dormand Long
As long as we have a public education infrastructure in Texas that borders on being dysfunctional, taxpayers can count on bearing the load of marginal citizens who are highly reliant upon public assistance for their survival, including massive expenditure through the various and sundry emergency rooms in the State.
There are programs in place which have scientifically proven effectiveness at providing the solid education essential to boost the children from poverty homes up into full participation in middle income careers, taxpaying, and fully contributing to society.
If anyone doubts the feasibility of non-English speaking homes to produce contributors to society, I suggest that you take the time to read the Washington Post education writer Jay Mathews piece on Rafe Esquith, who has been bootstrapping kids from the direst of poverty into the best colleges in the nation for a quarter of a century via his Hobart Shakespeareans innovative and effective protocols.
Do not expect standardized testing or teaching to the test to be effective. We have enormous expenses, but produce few who are ready for college in the standardized testing obsessed Texas failure in education.
The very best employers are crying for well trained candidates. What our schools are producing are graduates who not prepared for college and who will have difficulty securing jobs requiring more creative thinking than is done by drones in big box stores.
We can in this generation, virtually eliminate poverty in Texas by providing creative and innovative preschooling so that kids are fully prepared for kindergarten and by offering the quantity and the quality of high school college counseling that will enable first generation students to take the prerequisite courses and extracurricular projects to become fully prepared for entry into rigorous competitive colleges.
The cost of this adequate preparation of first generation students is a mere fraction of the massive and rapidly growing expenditures that we have loaded taxpayers with for carrying our prisons and other criminal justice system burden.
March 7 @ 2:40 p.m.
Tommy Walker
There are errors in this database that are causing skewed results. For example: Zapata County -- Population 4 Starr County -- Population 19 Dimmit County -- Population 2 et cetera
March 8 @ 11:11 a.m.
Tommy Walker
This is a great map that I will be sharing. Thank you for correcting the database behind it.
March 18 @ 6:16 p.m.
baltazar acevedo
I concur with Dormand Long's perspectives. The gaps in the social and economic infrastructures of communities must be ameliorated first before we go off expanding colleges and universities in south Texas. A recent report that was funded by the Houston Endowment provided data that reflected the tracking of 8th graders for over 883,000 Texas students starting 8th grade in 1996-98, the fraction getting any degree or certificate – “the Number” – was only 21.9%. Among Texas’ important African American and Latino populations, it was less than 13%. We have not held our educational institutions, both at the public and post-secondary levels accountable for giving the taxpayers a return of investment that is worthy of the billions of dollars that these institutions receive. When the dropout rates hover around 38% and college/university are graduating less than 15% of their students within four years along the Texas Border with Mexico, something has got to give.
Essentially, the universities are good at spinning the truth and never getting to the core of the data that demonstrate that they are not doing an outstanding job with our resources. I recent retired after 45 years in the Texas higher education system and I can tell you that higher education in Texas is over-sourced and that faculty and administrators are not paying sufficient attention to the outcomes: student success. I retired because I was frustrated by all of the public relations hyperbole that came out from the universities and with the callous attitudes that these institutions had for students. I am not even considering the issue of student debt here and how ill prepared students come out of high schools. Education and the sustainable development of families are the key to impeding the progress of poverty. Instead, the political gamesmanship continues both in Austin and in D.C.
Just once, I would like to hear a Chancellor or president state publicly, "we are doing a third rate job and I need to be fired." Instead we overpay them and faculty is hard to find on any Friday on any university campus in the state of Texas.
Baltazar Acevedo y Arispe, Jr., Ph.D. Borderlands Consulting Group Waco, Texas
Comments (4)
Dormand Long
As long as we have a public education infrastructure in Texas that borders on being dysfunctional, taxpayers can count on bearing the load of marginal citizens
who are highly reliant upon public assistance for their survival, including massive expenditure through the various and sundry emergency rooms in the State.
There are programs in place which have scientifically proven effectiveness at providing the solid education essential to boost the children from poverty homes
up into full participation in middle income careers, taxpaying, and fully contributing to society.
If anyone doubts the feasibility of non-English speaking homes to produce contributors to society, I suggest that you take the time to read the Washington Post
education writer Jay Mathews piece on Rafe Esquith, who has been bootstrapping kids from the direst of poverty into the best colleges in the nation for a quarter of a century via his Hobart Shakespeareans innovative and effective protocols.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/08/the_best_classroom_teacher_in.html
Do not expect standardized testing or teaching to the test to be effective. We have enormous expenses, but produce few who are ready for college in the
standardized testing obsessed Texas failure in education.
The very best employers are crying for well trained candidates. What our schools are producing are graduates who not prepared for college and who will have difficulty securing jobs requiring more creative thinking than is done by drones in big box stores.
We can in this generation, virtually eliminate poverty in Texas by providing creative and innovative preschooling so that kids are fully prepared for kindergarten and by offering the quantity and the quality of high school college counseling that will enable first generation students to take the prerequisite courses and extracurricular projects to become fully prepared for entry into rigorous competitive colleges.
The cost of this adequate preparation of first generation students is a mere fraction of the massive and rapidly growing expenditures that we have loaded taxpayers with for carrying our prisons and other criminal justice system burden.
Tommy Walker
There are errors in this database that are causing skewed results. For example:
Zapata County -- Population 4
Starr County -- Population 19
Dimmit County -- Population 2
et cetera
Tommy Walker
This is a great map that I will be sharing. Thank you for correcting the database behind it.
baltazar acevedo
I concur with Dormand Long's perspectives. The gaps in the social and economic infrastructures of communities must be ameliorated first before we go off expanding colleges and universities in south Texas. A recent report that was funded by the Houston Endowment provided data that reflected the tracking of 8th graders for over 883,000 Texas students starting 8th grade in 1996-98, the fraction getting any degree or certificate – “the Number” – was only 21.9%. Among Texas’ important African American and Latino populations, it was less than 13%. We have not held our educational institutions, both at the public and post-secondary levels accountable for giving the taxpayers a return of investment that is worthy of the billions of dollars that these institutions receive. When the dropout rates hover around 38% and college/university are graduating less than 15% of their students within four years along the Texas Border with Mexico, something has got to give.
Essentially, the universities are good at spinning the truth and never getting to the core of the data that demonstrate that they are not doing an outstanding job with our resources. I recent retired after 45 years in the Texas higher education system and I can tell you that higher education in Texas is over-sourced and that faculty and administrators are not paying sufficient attention to the outcomes: student success. I retired because I was frustrated by all of the public relations hyperbole that came out from the universities and with the callous attitudes that these institutions had for students. I am not even considering the issue of student debt here and how ill prepared students come out of high schools. Education and the sustainable development of families are the key to impeding the progress of poverty. Instead, the political gamesmanship continues both in Austin and in D.C.
Just once, I would like to hear a Chancellor or president state publicly, "we are doing a third rate job and I need to be fired." Instead we overpay them and faculty is hard to find on any Friday on any university campus in the state of Texas.
Baltazar Acevedo y Arispe, Jr., Ph.D.
Borderlands Consulting Group
Waco, Texas