Morgan County, Utah has the lowest poverty rate in the US

Morgan County in Utah reports 1.7 per cent of its residents living below the poverty line. That is the lowest rate of the 3,142 counties in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, set against a middle county figure of 13.2 per cent. With 12,585 residents, it works out at roughly 210 people.

A single low number invites a single explanation. The American Community Survey carries enough about the county to do better than that, so this post looks at what sits around the rate rather than at the rate alone.

How low, and how sure

Only 43 counties report poverty under 5 per cent. The second lowest is Stanley County in South Dakota at 2.1 per cent, with 3,012 residents. Of the ten lowest rates in the country, 8 belong to counties with fewer than 25,000 people.

That matters for how the figure is read. In a county this size a handful of households can move the rate by a point, and a survey estimate for a small area carries a wider margin than one for a large county. The safe reading is that poverty in Morgan County is very low, not that it is exactly 1.7 per cent. How public data is turned into population figures, and where small-area estimates need care, is set out in the methodology.

For a large-county comparison, the lowest rate among counties with 100,000 or more residents belongs to Douglas County in Colorado: 3.2 per cent across 368,283 people, with a median household income of $145,737.

What sits around the rate

Morgan County is young and built around large households. 34.0 per cent of residents are under 18, the 20th highest share nationally, against a middle county figure of 22.0 per cent. Only 12.1 per cent are 65 or over, against 19.6 per cent. A household averages 3.49 people, the largest in Utah and 16th nationally, where the middle county sits at 2.45.

Most of those households own their home. The owner-occupied rate is 90.2 per cent, 12th in the country. School completion is 97.6 per cent, 17th nationally, and 38.8 per cent of adults hold a degree against 21.4 per cent for the middle county. 65.1 per cent of residents aged 16 and over are in the labour force, against 58.6 per cent.

The health measures point the same way. Disability under 65 reads 5.6 per cent, about half the middle county figure of 11.0 per cent. The share of under-65s without health insurance is 5.7 per cent, the lowest in Utah.

Household income and income per person

The median household income is $126,092, 32nd of 3,142 counties. Income per person is $43,194, which ranks 425th. The gap is the household size again: more people share each household income. Both figures sit well above the middle county, but a plan built on household income alone would overstate what each resident has to spend.

One state, a wide range

Utah holds both ends of a long scale. Its middle county reports 9.9 per cent poverty. Davis County, with 366,742 residents, reports 6.0 per cent. San Juan County reports 18.4 per cent, the highest in the state, with a median household income of $54,890. That is a spread of 16.7 points inside one state, which is why a state average says little about any one county in it.

What this changes for a plan

A county poverty rate describes the place, not everyone in it. Around 210 people in Morgan County are still in poverty, and a programme or a market read that treats the county as uniformly well off will miss them. The useful question is who lives where, in what kind of household, which is what place-based analysis is for.

Cambium AI builds synthetic populations from this same public data, so a research or marketing team can look at the households inside a county rather than a single figure for it.

Data source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates