Measuring Poverty in the United States

Measuring Poverty in the United States is a fact sheet from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), which discusses how the U.S. government measures poverty, why the current measure is inadequate, and what alternative ways exist to measure economic hardship. 

NCCP’s Basic Needs Budget Calculator provides access to budgets for nearly 100 localities across 14 states, with more states coming soon.

A number of other basic family budget / self-sufficiency calculators are available to help differentiate between federally defined poverty income and actual family self-sufficiency levels:

- Self-Sufficiency Standards from Wider Opportunities for Women calculates how much income a working family needs for cities and counties in 30 states to meet their basic expenses of housing, child care, food, health care, transportation and taxes, depending on where they live and who is in their family.

- Living Wage Calculator (2008) from Penn State University presents living wage estimates for individual locations throughout the United States.  Data is presented on basic monthly expenses according to family size and composition to compute the level of gross annual income required to afford the cost-of-living.  A Living Wage (per hour) is then compared to:

o Typical wages for various professions
o Poverty level
o Minimum wage

- Basic Family Budget Calculator (2008) from the Economic Policy Institute with data by state and area

- Out of Reach (2009) from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition calculates for every county, Metropolitan Area, combined nonmetropolitan area and state in the United States the amount of money a household must earn in order to afford a rental unit at a range of sizes (0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 bedrooms) at the area’s Fair Market Rent (FMR), based on the generally accepted affordability standard of paying no more than 30% of income for housing costs.

Here are some examples of how Community Action Agencies have incorporated self-sufficiency data as part of their agency's Community Needs Assessment Reports:

- State of the Poor (2008) – Fairfax County Community Action Advisory Board (VA)

- State of the Poor (2007) – Total Action Against Poverty (VA)

- Poverty Report (2007-2008) (1.3 MB) – Macomb County Community Services Agency (MI)

- Needs Assessment Report Summary (2007) – Schuylkill Community Action (PA) – Community Assessment Brochure

- Community Assessment (2006) – Northwest New Jersey Community Action Program (NJ) – PowerPoint – Survey Results and Poverty Data