Poverty in the United States

So, what exactly is it to be in poverty?

I’ve railed on the the War on Poverty before, but what exactly is poverty? How is it measured? Is the measurement at all meaningful? I decided to get it from the horse’s mouth.

Poverty Measurement in the United States

The official poverty measure for the United States was established in 1969 and is calculated based on data collected in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a household survey sponsored jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and has data dating back to 1965 on key socio-economic topics about the population.

Two factors are used to determine a family’s or individual’s poverty status: (1) their family or individual income and (2) their poverty threshold. If a family’s total income for the year is below its assigned poverty threshold, then that family — and every individual in it — is considered to be in poverty.

U.S. Census Bureau

Income, at first glance that’s seems straightforward. Setting the “poverty threshold;” I wonder how that is done?