There are millions of impoverished households in the United States.
Do you fall under the federal poverty line? Also called the FPL, the federal poverty line dictates which households are eligible for certain types of federal assistance.
One of the good things about knowing how your household size measures up with the guidelines is that you may be eligible to get some extra help.
Keep reading to find out more about what this guideline is and how it works for certain American families.
What Does Federal Poverty Line Mean?
The federal poverty line (FPL) is meant to measure the income of households to see who may be eligible for programs and benefits. In the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services updates the guidelines every year to account for inflation.
What is poverty? In layman’s terms, poverty simply means that a household’s income is under a certain level.
Each agency that is in charge of the programs and benefits that service households living in poverty will use before-tax and/or after-tax income. This is how they know who is eligible and who is not.
If you go to paystubcreator.net, you can find that your paystub can help you figure out how much you earn each pay period. Adding them all together may give you a better idea of how much income you have overall.
Other things that may indicate poverty include annual consumption, total wealth, or assessment of well-being. The standard of living is considered as well, which would include material goods and the types of services that are available to a household.
What Are FPL Guidelines?
For households in the United States, the federal poverty line is dictated by poverty guidelines. These guidelines are the same for all states except for Alaska and Hawaii, who have their own poverty guidelines.
For a 1 person household, the poverty guideline is $12,490. Each additional person in the household helps to increase the amount by $4,420. For example, the next step up to 2 person households is the poverty guideline of $16,910.
An 8 person household would have a poverty guideline of $43,430.
The median household income in 2014 for United States families was $53,719 and this includes families of all sizes. This means half of the families in the United States make more and half of them make less than this amount.
As you can see, this amount is much more than many of the households that fall under poverty guidelines would make. Approximately 40 million American households live in poverty as of 2018.
Eligible FPL Programs
There are a few programs that many people falling under the poverty line would qualify for if they wanted to apply.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is available for households that earn 130% of the FPL. Medicaid is available for households that have income at 138% of the poverty line.
There are other programs as well, such as the National School Lunch Program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Federal programs that provide actual funding to families won’t use the poverty guidelines but may be another option. These include the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and SSI programs.
Is Your Household Eligible for Federal Assistance?
Now that you know more about FPL, you may realize that you fall under the line for your family or household size.
If this is the case, you likely are eligible for extra funding and assistance that you didn’t even know about.
You may have had a pay cut and this caused you to fall below the federal poverty line. If so, you can read about another person’s experience with a pay cut by checking out our website.
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