South Dakota Searchlight reports that poverty was declining nationwide and in 38 states in 2024, the last year that America had a real President. Nationwide, 10.6% of Americans were below the poverty line. Poverty has been trending downward since 2010, following decade of increasing poverty under the Bush II administration and a surge above 15% following the Great Recession.
South Dakota’s poverty rate in America’s last decent year was 10.4%, a couple ticks below the national average. Minnesota’s poverty rate was even lower at 9.3%.
| State | Poverty Rate 2024 | Food Stamp Use May 2025 |
| Minnesota | 9.3% | 7.8% |
| Wyoming | 10.1% | 4.6% |
| Montana | 10.2% | 7.1% |
| South Dakota | 10.4% | 8.1% |
| Nebraska | 10.9% | 7.5% |
| North Dakota | 11.1% | 7.2% |
| Iowa | 11.3% | 8.2% |
In our seven-state region, South Dakota’s poverty rate is the median, while South Dakota’s rate of food-stamp usage is second highest, behind only Iowa.
The food-stamp figures will go down as the current dictator slashes help for anyone but his fellow wealthy elites, but poverty will likely go up:
The decrease in the national poverty rate, from 11% in 2023 to 10.6% last year, could be short-lived, said Joseph Llobrera, director of research for food assistance at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Llobrera predicted that looming federal cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, also part of Trump’s domestic policy law, will increase the number of people who can’t afford food and other basic needs. “People’s resources are going to be strained in many ways in the years to come,” Llobrera said [Tim Henderson, “Poverty Dropped in Most States Last Year, But Trend Could Reverse as Cuts Loom,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2025.09.11].
Oxfam agrees that we’re making America impoverished again:
…instead of investing in programs proven to reduce poverty and inequality, President Trump and Republicans in Congress have done the exact opposite. They passed an unconscionable tax bill that slashes funding for Medicaid and food assistance while giving those in the top 0.1% of earners a $311,000 tax handout in just a single year.
Poverty rates and inequality are already too high, but they would certainly be far higher if programs like Medicaid and food assistance were not in place. Unless policymakers reverse President Trump’s catastrophic cuts, we should expect increased poverty, hunger and sickness in the years to come, all while the ultra-rich only get richer [Oxfam, press release, 2025.09.09].
Maybe Trump could lower the poverty rate by deporting poor people….
Don’t the libbies want to increase handing out of the food stamps? More stamps handed out equals a happier population, they will say. They say “you are cutting services.” South Dakota is trying to hand out less and less stamps, and make people be self-sufficient.
Few policymakers dispute the reasons educated people are fleeing my home state of South Dakota.
The state’s governor is a reactionary cracker. Infrastructure is crumbling. Industrial agriculture is smothering wildlife habitat. Churches are girding for gun violence. Meth has replaced alcohol as the state’s drug of choice. Pierre’s culture of corruption and attacks on kids have ended open government. Native wildlife are being exterminated to make way for disease-ridden domestic livestock and exotic fowl. Jails far outnumber colleges. Bankers continue to enslave landowners and the state’s medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny.
Yet, South Dakota is most lucrative state to practice medicine so why isn’t there a regulatory body like the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission to regulate medical care costs? Because the state is a corporatist tax haven for an exclusive set of Republicans while over $3 trillion languishes in South Dakota banks.
Any registered nurse with at least half a brain will leave for Minnesota, Colorado or the Southwest the instant they graduate so the work force in South Dakota just gets stupider and more Republican. The only worse state for nurses to work is Alabama. In fact, 21 of the bottom feeder states are all red and the best paid nurses work in blue states!