New Jersey Poverty Tracker

“New Jersey True Poverty Tracker,” shows what it is like for nearly three million New Jerseyans to live and barely survive in True Poverty as they disproportionately face degrees of deprivation—largely in an uneven playing field. LSNJ’s Poverty Research Institute (PRI) is releasing this report, part of its Poverty Benchmark Report Series, to provide a baseline to assess the more recent American Community Survey slated to be released by the Census Bureau later this month. This report reiterates PRI’s earlier finding that there are 2.9 million New Jersey residents in True Poverty or deprivation. By taking a hard look at True Poverty in relatively normal economic times in 2019, there is a valuable lesson to be learned, says LSNJ President Dawn K. Miller. “Clearly the failure to act more decisively in stemming poverty in our state in the past makes deprivation that much worse when hard times like COVID occur. COVID magnified the long-standing ills and unmet solutions to poverty in our state. But it now has given us new impetus and opportunity for change.”