Persons in
Family/Household		 100% 138% 150% 250% 400%
1 $11,670 $16,105 $17,505 $29,175 $46,680
2 15,730 21,707 23,595 39,325 62,920
3 19,790 27,310 29,685 49,475 79,160
4 23,850 32,913 35,775 59,625 95,400
5 27,910 38,516 41,865 69,775 111,640
6 31,970 44,119 47,955 79,925 127,880
7 36,030 49,721 54,045 90,075 144,120
8 40,090 55,324 60,135 100,225 160,360
For families/households
with more than 8 persons,
add $4,060 for each additional person.		 $4,060 5,602 6,090 10,150 16,240

Note: The 100% column shows the federal poverty level for each family size, and the percentage columns that follow represent income levels that are commonly used as guidelines for health programs.

SOURCE: Federal Register, Vol. 78, No. 16, January 24, 2014, pp. 5182-5183
The separate poverty guidelines for Alaska and Hawaii reflect Office of Economic Opportunity administrative practice beginning in the 1966-1970 period. Note that the poverty thresholds — the original version of the poverty measure — have never had separate figures for Alaska and Hawaii. The poverty guidelines are not defined for Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Palau. In cases in which a Federal program using the poverty guidelines serves any of those jurisdictions, the Federal office which administers the program is responsible for deciding whether to use the contiguous-states-and-D.C. guidelines for those jurisdictions or to follow some other procedure.

The poverty guidelines apply to both aged and non-aged units. The guidelines have never had an aged/non-aged distinction; only the Census Bureau (statistical) poverty thresholds have separate figures for aged and non-aged one-person and two-person units.

Programs using the guidelines (or percentage multiples of the guidelines — for instance, 125 percent or 185 percent of the guidelines) in determining eligibility include Head Start, the Food Stamp Program, the National School Lunch Program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Note

that in general, cash public assistance programs (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income) do NOT use the poverty guidelines in determining eligibility. The Earned Income Tax Credit program also does NOT use the poverty guidelines to determine eligibility. For a more detailed list of programs that do and don’t use the guidelines, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).

The poverty guidelines (unlike the poverty thresholds) are designated by the year in which they are issued. For instance, the guidelines issued in January 2013 are designated the 2013 poverty guidelines. However, the 2013 HHS poverty guidelines only reflect price changes through calendar year 2012; accordingly, they are approximately equal to the Census Bureau poverty thresholds for calendar year 2012. (The 2012 thresholds are expected to be issued in final form in September 2013; a preliminary version of the 2012 thresholds is now available from the Census Bureau.)

The computations for the 2013 poverty guidelines are available.

The poverty guidelines may be formally referenced as “the poverty guidelines updated periodically in the Federal Register by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the authority of 42 U.S.C. 9902(2).”

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