Before the coronavirus pandemic exploded across the United States, the poverty rate was falling.

The poverty rate in the United States dropped 1.3 percentage points in 2019, according to the Census Bureau. The rate was 10.5%, down from 11.8% in 2018.

The decline in 2019 was the fifth consecutive yearly drop. The poverty rate has decreased from 14.8% in 2014 to 10.5%, a decline of 4.3 percentage points.

The 2019 poverty rate of 10.5% is the lowest since 1959, when estimates were first published. The increase in full-time, year-round workers contributed to that number.

More women than men lived in poverty in 2018: 12.9% of women compared to 10.6% of men. Among married couples, the rate was just 4.7%, but for a family headed by a single mother, it soared to 24.9%.

In 2019, 34 million people were considered poor, a drop of 4.2 million people compared to 2018. The federal government defines the poverty threshold as about $25,700 a year for a family of four. That threshold is an unrealistically low number, according to critics, who point to the poverty t…

At the same time, the median household income rose 6.8% to $68,703. All workers saw their real median earnings increase by 1.4% from 2018 to 2019, though the increase was smaller for full-time, year-round workers, at 0.8%. The cost-of-living increase for 2020 is 1.6%.

Between 2018 and 2019, there was a 1.2 million increase in the number of full-time workers. The total of people with earnings rose even more, by 2.2 million.

When the coronavirus reached the United States in the spring of 2020, the economy tumbled. In just three months, between February and May, 14 percent of Americans lost their jobs. The unemployment rate skyrocketed from 3.5% in February to more than 19% in April.