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  • 1.  ALICE and 250% of Poverty

    Posted 04-17-2023 19:41

    Although the federal poverty level used to qualify households for social programs is adjusted each year to account for inflation, the adjustment is not perfect which leads to sequential under adjustment not a problem for adjoining years but cumulates and creates fairly serious under adjustment over ten or more years.  The 100% poverty level is meaningless as a category of need.  Typically social programs now use 150%, 175% or 200% of poverty as a household qualification level for social programs, currently there is a focus on Asset Limited Income Constrained yet Employed (ALICE) households which corresponds to the category of being a poor household (United Way has introduced this classification) and it is in use in most US states.  ALICE approximately corresponds to 250% of the federal poverty level.  I am working on a social program in Philadelphia, and the number of households at 250% of federal poverty level or below.  We know from the most recent United Way ALICE study that 51% of Philadelphia households are poor.  What we need to know as a check is what percent of Philadelphia households are at or below 250% of the federal poverty level.  We found a federal statistical database that gives the number of households for any US county (Philadelphia is both a city and a county) at 200% of poverty.  Can you help us by pointing us towards a data source for number of households in Philadelphia at or below 250% of poverty?



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    Hugh Peach
    President
    H. Gil Peach & Associates, LLC
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  • 2.  RE: ALICE and 250% of Poverty

    Posted 04-18-2023 06:17

    I recommend looking at the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data the Census Bureau provides for the ACS.
    American Community Survey Microdata (census.gov)

    You can download the data via the tidycensus package in R, or else use data.census.gov to define your own categories and calculate totals.  I haven't worked much with this tool, but it looks like you can define income categories and use the household weights to calculate estimates for a large metro area like Philadelphia.  The PUMS link above has tutorials for data.census.gov.

    For a specific calculation like the one you're requesting, this source is most direct one I know.



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    Gregory Erkens
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