New data released by the U.S. Census Bureau provide key insights into the economic well-being of Granite Staters. The American Community Survey’s 2023 state-level data showed that median household income recovered to 2021 levels after adjusting for inflation, following a decline in 2022. While the median household income increased, the poverty rate held steady at 7.2 percent, reflecting that nearly 100,000 New Hampshire residents had very little income despite purchasing power growing for the median household.
Household Incomes
The estimated median household income in New Hampshire was $96,838, based on data collected by the American Community Survey during 2023. This median income estimate increased from the $89,992 estimated for 2022, even after adjusting for inflation and accounting for statistical uncertainty. After taking inflation into account, the median household income effectively rebounded to about 2021 levels; in 2022, median household income fell behind inflation, and spending power dropped relative to 2021. The 2023 data show this median income recovered to 2021 levels after the inflation adjustment of 2021 dollars to 2023 purchasing power. The inflation-adjusted 2023 household incomes were higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to the Great Recession of 2007-2009, and reflected the relative speed of the post-pandemic recovery compared to the slow recovery from the Great Recession.
Of the estimated 569,493 households in New Hampshire in 2023, 25 percent, or one in four, had pre-tax incomes below $50,000 annually. About 17 percent had incomes lower than $35,000, and nearly 11 percent had estimated incomes below $25,000 during 2023. About 48 percent had incomes over $100,000, and almost 16 percent had incomes of $200,000 or more.
The average household size in New Hampshire was 2.39 people in the 2023 data. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimated the living wage income for a two-person household in New Hampshire in 2024 was $67,155 for two adults, $88,074 for one adult with one child, and $97,876 for two working adults with one child. The Economic Policy Institute estimated the income a family needed in 2024 for a “modest yet adequate standard of living,” which does not include costs such as paying for student loans or for homeownership as well as for any form of entertainment, ranged from $72,501 to $94,597 for a household with two adults and one child, depending on where they lived in New Hampshire.
Poverty in New Hampshire
The U.S. Census Bureau calculates poverty thresholds for different household sizes. The Official Poverty Measure poverty threshold is not adjusted for changes in living costs between the 48 contiguous United States; other measures of hardship differ, such as the regional housing cost variations incorporated into the Supplemental Poverty Measure. The Official Poverty Measure thresholds for 2023 are $15,852 for a single person under 65 years old, $21,002 for a two-person household with one child and one adult under 65, $24,526 for a three-person household with one child, and $30,900 for a four-person household with two children.
An estimated 98,000 people lived with incomes below Official Poverty Measure poverty thresholds in 2023. This estimate is slightly larger than the estimated 2023 populations of Claremont, Concord, Laconia, and Portsmouth combined. That total number of people in poverty included about 20,000 children and 21,000 older adults.
The overall poverty rate in New Hampshire was 7.2 percent, according to the Official Poverty Measure, which was the same estimated rate as 2022 and 2021, and statistically indistinguishable from the 7.3 percent poverty rate from 2019. The poverty rate for children was 8.0 percent, which was statistically indistinguishable from the 2022 rate. Poverty for older adults, at an estimated 7.6 percent, was also substantially unchanged from 2022, but remained higher than it was in 2019.
New Hampshire had the lowest Official Poverty Measure poverty rate among the states, with Utah’s 9.0 percent and both Colorado’s and Minnesota’s 9.3 percent rates as the next closest estimates. However, other measures of hardship, also published by the U.S. Census Bureau in September, complicate that conclusion. Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which adjusts for certain expenses, taxes and noncash benefits, household compositions, and geographic differences in housing costs, New Hampshire’s 7.4 percent poverty rate for the 2021-2023 period was higher than Maine’s 5.9 percent; Maine’s rate was statistically tied for the lowest in the country with several other states, including Minnesota and South Dakota. The Supplemental Poverty Measure, while not a replacement of the Official Poverty Measure, can capture key economic conditions impacting household well-being that are missed by the Official Poverty Measure, such as the reduction of child poverty by half in 2021 due largely to the expansion of the Child Tax Credit.
Within the Official Poverty Measure data for New Hampshire, 2023 continued to show longstanding differences in economic hardship between groups, reflecting both historical and present-day barriers to opportunity that hinder upward mobility. While data limitations prevent a reliable, comprehensive analysis of 2023 data, the estimated poverty rate for Granite Staters identifying as of two or more races was higher than for white residents who did not identify as Hispanic or Latino. The poverty rate for New Hampshire residents who identified themselves as Asian was lower than for non-Hispanic white residents. Data to be published in December 2024 will provide more reliable insights into the well-being of groups and geographies within the Granite State.
Other Key Data
Beyond these topline numbers, the American Community Survey provides a wealth of information on the lives and well-being of Granite Staters. For example, about 51 percent of the estimated 149,626 renter households in New Hampshire paid more than 30 percent of their incomes on rent and utilities during 2023. About 13 percent of workers age 16 and over commuted out of state for employment, while about 16 percent worked from home. Income inequality, as measured by the Gini Index, is not higher than it was just before the COVID-19 pandemic, but is higher than it was in 2010. These data, as well as other information recently provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, provide additional insights into the well-being of Granite Staters.
Adrianna Smith scored 32 points and Maine made 11 3-point shots Saturday in a 73-51 women’s basketball win over New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire.
Smith was 12 for 23 from the floor, including 4 for 4 from 3-point range. She also had nine rebounds in Maine’s 11th straight win over the Wildcats.
Olivia Alvarez made four 3-pointers and finished with a career-high 16 points for Maine (9-10, 4-2 America East). Asta Blauenfeldt and Sarah Talon each added eight points.
Maddie Cavanaugh scored 17 points and Lucia Melero had 10 for New Hampshire (6-12, 0-5).
One month before Martin Luther King Day, I left the cold, clouded skies of New Hampshire for the heat and blinding sun of the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire. I left behind the cold case of Nickenley Turenne, a young man killed by Manchester police on Dec. 6 after they found him asleep in his car and gunned him down as he tried to flee.
One of my daughters, a professional scuba diver in Bonaire, wished to gift her niece, my granddaughter, the opportunity to earn her open dive certification so she could experience the beauty of the island’s marine life. My granddaughter packed a book I had given her, “The Devil’s Half Acre” by Kristen Green on the history of the American slave trade. Born in 1832 and enslaved by a brutal trader, Mary Lumpkin lived at his Richmond, Va. slave jail. In this destitute setting, she eventually freed herself and her children, inherited her husband’s jail and transformed it into “God’s Half Acre,” a school to educate Black students. It exists today as Virginia Union University, one of the first Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
In 1854, an enslaved man named Anthony Burns had escaped Richmond only to be captured in Boston and delivered south to said Lumpkin’s jail in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act. Though a warrant for his arrest was secured, Boston had an extensive network of free Black people, white abolitionists and the Boston Vigilance Committee to protect fugitives. Neither the fliers they plastered (“The Kidnappers are Here!”) nor the 5,000 supporters gathered at the courthouse crying “Rescue him!” were enough to save Burns who was told, “You must go back. There isn’t humanity, there isn’t Christianity, there isn’t justice enough here to save you; you must go back.”
Advertisement
I read avidly, seated at the site of the “slaves cabins” on Bonaire Island, “kasnan di katibu” in Papiamentu, the Bonairian language, where from the 1600s to the 1800s a notorious slave trade flourished under Dutch rule. Considered government property the enslaved labored in the saltpans — vast, pink hued pools where seawater evaporated leaving behind crystallized salt they broke up with pickaxes and shovels, then carried further onto the beach for export.
The plaque near the huts, far from being historically accurate, reads like a romanticized story with no names and no mention of the violent conditions endured under the blazing sun or the Dutch role in Atlantic slavery. According to Dutch historian, Anne van Mourik, “The information provided at significant historical sites is not only lacking and outdated. It often manipulates history by sanitizing it, without perpetrators, only faceless victims … It suggests that Bonaire’s colonial past has faded into obscurity, as if it has been forgotten or worse, that it does not matter.”
The belief that Black people, at best, hold little significance or, at worst, are expendable has been loudly countered by the Black Lives Matter slogan “say their names.” Anthony Poore, president and CEO of the NH Center for Justice and Equity, and Tanisha Johnson, executive directive of Black Lives Matter, NH, released the following statement in response to the dehumanizing conduct by police who, unprovoked and without evidence, assumed Nickenley Turrene to be a dangerous criminal:
“We must continue the conversations that will result in rejecting the narratives that continue to criminalize Black existence. It is not a crime to be unhoused. It is not a crime to sleep in a car. These are conditions created by systemic failures, not individual wrongdoing. Responding to police presence with fear is not irrational or suspicious. It is a survival response shaped by generations of racial profiling, over policing, and violence against Black communities. No nonviolent behavior, no perceived noncompliance, and no expression of fear should result in death.”
When time and space collapse, we continue to feel the effects of the Fugitive Slave Act in our current overpolicing and the frightened response of those like Burns and Turenne running for freedom as a perpetual threat punishable by death.
Advertisement
Ultimately, Bonaire is a stark contrast between privilege and poverty. The Dutch continue to profit from a luxurious lifestyle while Bonairians, descendants of former slaves, live as lower class citizens in shacks without electricity or running water. I, older and grey, and my granddaughter, young and Black, leave the island with contrasting memories. She has thoroughly enjoyed swimming peacefully beside turtles and pods of dolphins undisturbed in calm waters. On land, however, the turbulence of an intolerant world remains ever present.
As we return home to honor MLK Day, we’re reminded of the painfully slow progress toward equity and justice. Tragically, in the case of Nick Turenne and countless others, “there was no justice enough to save him.” And in the words of Martin Luther King, until that day comes, “justice delayed is justice denied.”
