Next month is National Poverty Awareness Month for 2024, so we’re going to get right to the point of the headline: the percentage of people living in poverty in Cobb County at the best current estimate is 8.3 percent, according to the 5-year American Community Survey released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau (more on that below).

Breaking that down further, the percentage of people living below the federal poverty rate was 6.2 percent among White residents, 9.7 percent of Black residents and 15.6 percent among Hispanic or Latino residents of any race. See the table below for the poverty rate of Cobb residents of other race and ethnicities.

The percentage of children in poverty in Cobb County is about 10.4 percent. So a little more than one in ten of the children in our county are in families below the poverty line, and are susceptible to all the attendant issues that come with poverty, from poor nutrition to barriers to educational achievement.

So how does Cobb County compare to the nation as a whole, Georgia’s rate, and neighboring counties?

Nationally the percentage of people living below the poverty line is 12.5 percent (so at 8.3 percent Cobb’s rate is lower). Georgia’s rate is 13.5 percent, a point higher than the national average, so Cobb compares even more favorably compared to Georgia’s overall rate.

Of adjacent counties, the rate in Fulton is 12.5 percent, Douglas is 11.6 percent, Paulding 6.7 percent, and Cherokee 6.6 percent.

What is the trend in Cobb County?

The current 5-year ACS ran from 2018 to 2022. Compared to the 5-year ACS ending in 2017 the poverty rate in the county has dropped, from 10.9 percent in 2017 to 8.3 percent for 2022.

According to a recent press release from the Census Bureau, the national rate declined significantly from the last non-overlapping ACS (2013-2017) and about a third of U.S. counties experienced declining poverty rate.

How is poverty distributed across Cobb County?

We’re going to dig much further into the distribution of poverty in the county by census tract in a later article, but below is a screenshot of a map generated at https://data.census.gov. You can visit an interactive version at this link.

Note that every part of the county has census tracts with poverty rates above 10 percent, even East Cobb.

Poverty by different demographic groups in the county

Below is the table for Cobb County’s poverty figures in the 2018-2022 ACS (the table number designated by the census is S1701). We removed the margins of error columns so the table would fit on a web page, but we saved the complete table as an Excel spreadsheet that you can download by following this link.

Label (Grouping)	Cobb’s total population breakdown	Total count of each group below poverty	Percentage of each group below poverty
Population for whom poverty status is determined	754716	62536	8.3%
AGE
Under 18 years	172984	18033	10.4%
Under 5 years	43454	4509	10.4%
5 to 17 years	129530	13524	10.4%
Related children of householder under 18 years	172331	17388	10.1%
18 to 64 years	483841	37766	7.8%
18 to 34 years	175551	19710	11.2%
35 to 64 years	308290	18056	5.9%
60 years and over	141584	9742	6.9%
65 years and over	97891	6737	6.9%
SEX
Male	367574	28229	7.7%
Female	387142	34307	8.9%
RACE AND HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN
White alone	399116	24557	6.2%
Black or African American alone	206541	19997	9.7%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone	2901	885	30.5%
Asian alone	42407	1702	4.0%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone	342	26	7.6%
Some other race alone	46195	9468	20.5%
Two or more races	57214	5901	10.3%
Hispanic or Latino origin (of any race)	101661	15836	15.6%
White alone, not Hispanic or Latino	372825	21414	5.7%
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
Population 25 years and over	516257	32925	6.4%
Less than high school graduate	35492	6191	17.4%
High school graduate (includes equivalency)	90693	8776	9.7%
Some college, associate’s degree	132089	8991	6.8%
Bachelor’s degree or higher	257983	8967	3.5%
EMPLOYMENT STATUS
Civilian labor force 16 years and over	427975	23146	5.4%
Employed	408304	19292	4.7%
Male	214001	9046	4.2%
Female	194303	10246	5.3%
Unemployed	19671	3854	19.6%
Male	8877	1671	18.8%
Female	10794	2183	20.2%
WORK EXPERIENCE
Population 16 years and over	603386	46574	7.7%
Worked full-time, year-round in the past 12 months	306862	5401	1.8%
Worked part-time or part-year in the past 12 months	135050	18010	13.3%
Did not work	161474	23163	14.3%
ALL INDIVIDUALS WITH INCOME BELOW THE FOLLOWING POVERTY RATIOS
50 percent of poverty level	28489	(X)	(X)
125 percent of poverty level	84961	(X)	(X)
150 percent of poverty level	107587	(X)	(X)
185 percent of poverty level	145653	(X)	(X)
200 percent of poverty level	160095	(X)	(X)
300 percent of poverty level	269058	(X)	(X)
400 percent of poverty level	364544	(X)	(X)
500 percent of poverty level	451073	(X)	(X)
UNRELATED INDIVIDUALS FOR WHOM POVERTY STATUS IS DETERMINED	141657	25448	18.0%
Male	69625	11184	16.1%
Female	72032	14264	19.8%
15 years	161	161	100.0%
16 to 17 years	492	484	98.4%
18 to 24 years	18623	7881	42.3%
25 to 34 years	36856	4415	12.0%
35 to 44 years	19684	2240	11.4%
45 to 54 years	20205	3000	14.8%
55 to 64 years	19441	3356	17.3%
65 to 74 years	14543	1900	13.1%
75 years and over	11652	2011	17.3%
Mean income deficit for unrelated individuals (dollars)	7949	(X)	(X)
Worked full-time, year-round in the past 12 months	77597	1810	2.3%
Worked less than full-time, year-round in the past 12 months	31816	10989	34.5%
Did not work	32244	12649	39.2%
Population in housing units for whom poverty status is determined	754172	62164	8.2%

About the American Community Survey

Yesterday was a big day for people who follow the census. The 5-year American Community Survey (ACS) for 2018 to 2022 was released.

The one sentence version of the difference between the Decennial Census and the ACS is: the better-known decennial census attempts to count the entire nation every ten years, but asks a lot fewer questions. The ACS polls a lot fewer people but with a lot more questions and is done yearly and then grouped into 1-year- and 5-year versions.

Both the Decennial Census and the ACS are important.

The Decennial Census determines how many representatives each state gets in the House of Representatives.

The ACS has an enormous amount of data not on the 2020 Decennial Census, such as education, employment, internet access, and transportation, and is used by federal, state and local governments, businesses and policy advocates to make decisions about where to place their efforts.