The NOVA Region Dashboard’s demographics on income, poverty, educational attainment, and the foreign born population have been updated with the new 2023 American Community Survey one-year data released September 12 by the U.S. Census Bureau. View this data to stay informed and for insights on current demographic conditions and trends.
Check back on or after December 12th, for the 2023 American Community Survey five-year data analysis of all Northern Virginia jurisdictions.
Over the coming days, NVRC will be issuing a series of four blogs on the data highlights and insights of this new 2023 demographic data. This the third in the series.
The Northern Virginia region has some of the highest household incomes in the United States. However, there are people in poverty in the region, and their needs must be recognized and addressed. The poverty rate is the ratio of the number of persons in poverty divided by the number of persons for whom poverty status was determined. Not everyone had their poverty status determined so this figure will be less than the total population.
Out of the 843 jurisdictions with a population of 65,000 or more in the USA, one of the ten lowest poverty rates is in the Northern Virginia locality of Loudoun County (9th). Loudoun County is also the number one ranked for median household income.
The poverty rate patterns over time, for the regions large jurisdictions (population of 65,000 or more), are shown in the following graph. Northern Virginia, as defined for this analysis using the region's five largest jurisdictions, has an estimated poverty rate of 6.0%, with a margin of error of (+/- 0.5%).
The persons in poverty data has large year-to-year fluctuations due to the small sample size of the survey, together with the small amount of persons in poverty. The margins of error are large for the poverty one-years estimates, making any poverty trends undiscernible. The margins of error, are large for the poverty one-year estimates, making any poverty trends undiscernible. However, the low to high ranges of poverty over time for each jurisdiction and the region, and comparisons between jurisdictions and the region can be gleaned. For instance, Northern Virginia's poverty rate has ranged from approximately 6% to 7% between 2010 and 2023, and Loudoun County’s poverty rate has been consistently lower than the other large jurisdictions.
About the Northern Virginia Regional Commission
NVRC is a consortium of thirteen local governments representing more than 2.5 million residents. While only 3% of Virginia's land mass, Northern Virginia has a GDP of $276 Billion which is 41.6% of the GDP of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Northern Virginia’s GDP is larger than 24 states and the District of Columbia and if a country would be the 48th largest economy in the world.