Poverty thresholds are the dollar amounts used by the U.S. Census Bureau to determine poverty status. Each person or family is assigned one out of 48 possible poverty thresholds, which vary according to the size of the family and the ages of the members. The same thresholds are used throughout the United States. Poverty thresholds are updated annually for inflation using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). Although the poverty thresholds in some sense reflect a family’s needs, they are intended for use as a statistical yardstick, not as a complete description of what people and families need to live.
The Poverty Guidelines are released by the Department of Health and Human services. These are a simplified, alternative version of the federal poverty measure that are used for administrative purposes, like determining financial eligibility for certain federal programs. Like the poverty thresholds, they vary by family size. Unlike the poverty thresholds, they vary by geography. There is one set of guidelines for the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia, and different sets for both Alaska and Hawaii.