Number of Households by Percentage of FPL

ACS provides the number of families by percentage of the Federal Poverty Level (Table S1702). Is there an equivalent table for households or way to determine the number of households by percentage of Federal Poverty Level?

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

  • The Poverty Level is defined for the family.  These are related individuals who live in the same household as the "Head of Household." The Poverty Level is not defined for people who reside in Group Quarters and Group Quarters are NOT households.  In any case, since S1702 is the count of families the counts in S1702 can be considered the same as a household.  You might compare S1702 to S1701 which is count of people related to the householder. The universe for S1701 is people for whom Poverty status is determined.   In S1701 people who are not related to the Householder or who reside in Group Quarters are not "counted in the denominator"

    Dave

  • Hi David,

    Thank you for your response. My goal is to determine the number of households that fall below certain poverty ratios. This data is to support an assistance program which based on household need, not just family need. The program applies to individuals living alone in addition to families.

    Comparing the number of families and the number of households from table S1101, there seems to be significantly more households than families in the region of interest. This makes me hesitant to use S1702 because it could be missing a significant number of households that would qualify for the program. Is this a valid concern?

    Ideally, I would like a dataset like S1901 which has the bins of income for households, but include the number of individuals in the household. Does something like that exist or is there a way to calculate it?

    Thanks again for your consideration.

  • The poverty threshold is determined for families that consist of a single person. See

    www.census.gov/.../poverty-measures.html

    In general there are poverty tables for counts of individuals who are in families (does not include group quarters) and counts of families.

    The table with Poverty ratios for the universe of people for whom Poverty is determined is S1701.  As an FYI you can compute the number of people for whom Poverty level is not determined but subtracting the total in S1701 from B01003. 

    As an FYI the table with the counts of households is B25008 

    B25008 Total Population in Occupied Housing Units by Tenure

    You might consider using PUMS microdata.  You can get the numbers that you need using microdata.

    Dave