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A Tolerable life
Let's say for a moment you are a single adult on a very tight budget and you are looking for adequate housing. You would need approximately $280 a month, right? After all, you are not too fussy about where you live. Maybe you would even consider a neighborhood that may have a higher crime rate than average. Bear in mind that this number will include utility costs. Now let's plan your grocery budget. You are frugal and don't have a huge appetite. You will probably get by just fine on $119 dollars a month, right? These are sufficient amounts needed to live a tolerable life if one applies typical household budgeting percentages to the figures defined by the U.S. Census Bureau and the department of Health and Human Services as being above poverty. Each organization issues respectively the federal poverty threshold and poverty guidelines. The two figures are not that different. Each department arrives at a number just over $10,000 a year for a single adult. That number increases just a few thousand dollars for each person added to the family. The threshold is used for statistical purposes. They are designed to inform you and the bureaucracies that love you how you rank against the other citizens of your city, your state, or your nation. The guidelines are used by the Department of Health and Human Services to determine eligibility for assistance such as food stamps, Head Start, Medicare, etc. The list of the federal programs included is extensive. The truth is, I paid $250 for a 3 room, roach infested slum in the Midwest in 1989, but I suspect the bang for the buck has declined since then.

The HHS will be the first to tell you that the Census Bureau's thresholds "are not in any way intended to represent an item by item budget." The numbers were originally calculated in 1963 by Mollie Orshansky. She worked for the Social Security Administration. Data available from 1954 indicated that a family spent 1/3 of their income on food. She used the Department of Agriculture's economy food plan, an emergency food plan developed to determine minimal sustenance levels, and she multiplied that figure by 3 to arrive at the nation's first definition of poverty. Since that time, the responsibility for determining who is poor and the means of arriving at the figures have gone through extensive evolution. The Census Bureau uses a 48 cell matrix and weighted averages that rely on annual changes in the Consumer Price Index to determine the thresholds. Essentially,

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