Delaware was one of only two states to see a rise in its poverty rate between 2016 and 2017, according to data released Thursday in the U.S. Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey.

Joined by West Virginia, the state saw a jump in the percentage of residents living below the poverty level, while 20 states saw their poverty rates drop and the rest remained unchanged. The First State's poverty rate increased from 11.7 percent to 13.6 percent, marking its highest rate in more than a decade and even surpassing a post-Great Recession slump. Until now, Delaware's poverty rate had been steadily declining and had dropped from 12.5 percent in 2014 to 11.7 percent in 2016.

Not only does the most recent figure contradict the state's declining poverty rate up until this point, it also counters national trends. The national poverty rate dropped slightly from 12.7 percent in 2016 to 12.3 percent in 2017, marking a third consecutive annual decline. Notably, Delaware's poverty rate is higher than the national average, but still far lower than other states such as Louisiana and New Mexico, which have rates surpassing 18 percent.

If Delaware's poverty rate is rising, it could be related to an increase in racial and economic diversity as more people migrate to the state, according to Daniel Rich, a professor at University of Delaware's School of Public Policy and Administration. Rich and his colleagues usually look at poverty rates over a three-year period, instead of the American Community Survey's one-year measurement, to avoid anomalies with a particularly small state population. Still, he acknowledges that a changing population would impact the poverty rate.

"Demographics (in Delaware) have been changing, and you can see those changes in many areas," he says.

Delaware is among the states that have seen the fastest growth of their Hispanic populations. Between 2007 and 2014, the state's Hispanic population grew by 63 percent, from 51,000 to 83,000 . The state's Hispanic and Latino population was more than 89,500 in 2017 and accounted for 9.3 percent of its total population, a marginal increase from the year before, according to the Census data .

Rich says the state's rural, western region of Sussex County is experiencing a Hispanic population boom and is growing faster than Delaware's other two counties. One in five Delawareans who identify as Hispanic or Latino live in poverty, which is more than twice the rate of white, non-Hispanics.

Delaware's two largest cities, Wilmington and Dover, also have some of the state's highest poverty rates.

Poverty in Delaware is concentrated in specific regions, but the survey data show it's also much more likely to occur in certain age brackets. The child poverty rate far surpasses that of the adult population, which is also true on a national level, according to Rich. In 2017, more than a quarter of Delaware children under 5 years old were living below the poverty level. Comparatively, slightly more than 13 percent of adults ages 18 to 64 were living in poverty that year.

Janice Barlow, a policy scientist at University of Delaware's Center for Community Research and Service, thinks one factor contributing to the high early childhood poverty rate is the fact that parents have yet to meet their earnings potential.

"You have new families starting out, so you have parents at the beginning of their earnings trajectory. Families mature and have higher incomes (later on)," Barlow says.

Like the rest of the state's population, the demographics of its young population is changing drastically. In 1980, three-fourths of Delaware children were white, according to University of Delaware's Institute for Public Administration . By 2014, half of children in the state were a minority.

Delaware's Child Poverty Task Force outlined recommendations in 2009 to reduce child poverty by 50 percent over 10 years. As the new statistics suggest, this goal is still far from being achieved.

"The legislation was fragmented and dispersed, and it did not have the kind of impact that people had hoped," Rich says.

Delaware's higher poverty rate for children is not unique to the state, he says. Even as the national poverty rate started to fall over recent years, it recovered more slowly for children.