U.S. Federal Poverty Guidelines Used To Determine Financial Eligibility For Certain Federal Programs

In February, 2017, the Office of Assistant Secretary For Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) released these U.S. Federal poverty guidelines used to determine financial eligibility for certain federal programs. The poverty guidelines are calculated by taking the 2015 Census Bureau’s poverty thresholds and adjusting them for price changes between 2015 and 2016 using the Consumer Price Index. The poverty thresholds used by the Census Bureau for statistical purposes are complex and are not composed of standardized increments between family sizes. Since many program officials prefer to use guidelines with uniform increments across family sizes, the poverty guidelines include rounding . . .