I'm going to post a couple of links that relate to the official 'poverty threshhold' and 'poverty guidelines' utilized for statistical, research, and most importantly, policy decisions and program eligibility in the United States. I'll have to do it two posts.

Warning: this some very dry reading. It is, however, essential reading if you want to have any understanding at all of
1. how our government defines poverty,
2. the benchmarks used in most research studies and statistical    analyses indicating the number of households officially living in poverty
3. The financial eligibility requirements that are used to determine who gets public assistance or qualifies for assorted government needs based programs. (Different programs use different per centages of the federal poverty level. ex. income not in excess of 100% of the federal poverty level. income not in excess of 130% of the federal poverty level, etc. Allowable deductions from income to determine eligibility for assorted programs are also often limited to deductions allowed in the formula used to determine poverty levels.

My next post will contain the first link.

Janie