For example, housing costs have surged over 800% since then.įor that reason, some critics say the multiplier of three should be raised to four or even higher. Most analysts, however, consider the official poverty line to be an extremely conservative measure of economic hardship.Ī major reason for this is that families today have to spend much more on things other than food than they did in the 1960s. For example, to qualify for SNAP, a household must be below 130% of the poverty line for its size. The government uses the official poverty line as the base to determine who’s eligible for a range of social programs, from Medicaid to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Among those living below the poverty line, 45% live in “deep” poverty, which means they live on less than half of the official poverty line. Keep in mind, though, these thresholds represent impoverishment at its most opulent level. population was in poverty in 2019, the most recent data available. The cutoff itself varies by the number of people in the household, while a household’s annual income is based upon the earnings of everyone currently residing within it. The federal government adjusts the poverty line annually to reflect increases in the cost of living. For an interesting contrast, that’s less than half what the average American polled in 2013 said was the “smallest amount of money” a family of four needed to get by, or $58,000. In 2019, the same family’s poverty line stood at $26,172. Therefore, the logic was that if a minimally adequate diet could be purchased for a particular dollar amount, multiplying that figure by three would give the amount of income needed to purchase the basic necessities for a minimally adequate life.īack in 1963, that translated into a poverty line of US$3,128 for a family of four. When the poverty thresholds were devised, research indicated that the typical family spent approximately one-third of its income on food and the remaining two-thirds on all other expenses. What about all the other basic necessities, such as housing, clothing and health care? That’s where the multiplier of three comes in. If a family’s income falls above the line it is not considered in poverty, while those below the line are counted as poor. The government came up with its official method for counting poor people in the mid-1960s.įirst, it asks, what does it cost to purchase a minimally adequate diet during the year for a particularly sized family? That number is then multiplied by three, and you have arrived at the poverty line. Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images Counting the poorīroadly speaking, poverty means not having the money to purchase the basic necessities to maintain a minimally adequate life, such as food, shelter and clothing. The need for food aid exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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