Is the poverty threshold inclusive or exclusive?

USA
1

What is the correct formula for identifying individuals (or households) in poverty? Is it:

POVERTY < 100 or

POVERTY <= 100?

In other words, is a person at the threshold in poverty or above poverty?

In reading through various poverty questions, it appears people sometimes include poverty status of 100 when calculating poverty rates and sometimes its only 0-99.

Can you please clarify?

Thanks,

2

It sounds like you are referring to the variable RACESING. At the present time, this variable is not available for the 2015 and 2016 ACS samples. We do hope to make this variable available in the future, but unfortunately I don’t have an accurate forecast of this timeline.

3

Sorry about this, I got my wires crossed yesterday. Here is the answer to your question.

In most cases POVERTY is defined < 100. That is, the threshold is exclusive. Intuitively living in poverty is defined as living below the poverty line and not living in poverty is everything else.