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Planners and policymakers use poverty estimates as key indicators to evaluate trends and current economic conditions within communities and to make comparisons across demographic groups. Federal and state governments often use these estimates to allocate funds to local communities. Government agencies and local organizations regularly use these estimates to identify the number of individuals and families eligible for various programs.
This brief uses the 2015 and 2016 American Community Surveys (ACS) 1-year estimates to analyze poverty rates for 2016 as well as the changes in poverty from 2015 for the nation, states, and the District of Columbia, and the most populous metropolitan areas.1 The brief also discusses the distribution of people by income-to-poverty ratio.
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1 Metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas (metro and micro areas) are geographic entities delineated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for use by federal statistical agencies in collecting, tabulating, and publishing federal statistics. The term "Core Based Statistical Area" (CBSA) is a collective term for both metro and micro areas. A metro area contains a core urban area with a population of 50,000 or more individuals, and a micro area contains an urban core of at least 10,000 (but less than 50,000) individuals. For more information, see <www.census.gov/programs-surveys/metro-micro/about /omb-standards.html>.
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