Is the national poverty rate among two parent households 5.4%?

According to the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the national poverty rate of two parent households in 2021 was 9.5%. This is less than the recorded poverty rate among single parent households, 31.7%, and the overall poverty rate of all family types, 16%.

Child Trends, a nonprofit organization focused on child welfare research, explains that greater rates of poverty in single parent households are not solely due to depending on a single earner’s income. A single parent may face additional obstacles to employment, such as inflexible work policies, that make balancing childcare and household demands without a second parent more difficult. Many must rely on unaffordable childcare in order to keep their jobs, amplifying the challenges of surviving on a single earner’s income.

Governor Stitt’s office did not respond to our inquiry on the source of their statistics at the time of publication.