Can you be on a six-figure income and still be considered poor? | Arwa Mahdawi

"Have you heard that a family of four in the US is now considered poor if their household income is under $136,500 (103,300) a year? Don't @ me about the maths I'm just the messenger. The person behind this calculation is Michael Green, who is chief strategist and portfolio manager for Simplify Asset Management. I think this means that he makes large sums of money by fiddling with even larger sums of money."

"It's completely disconnected from reality, the economist Kevin Corinth said, for example, noting that the $136,500 figure was higher than the US median household income of $83,730. It's laughable to put a poverty line far above the median income in the United States. Is it really that laughable? I don't think there's anything particularly funny about the fact that it's hard for a family to live on the median income now."

A calculation places a four-person household poverty threshold at roughly $136,500 annually, far above the Department of Health and Human Services benchmark of $31,200. That calculation prompted critics to call the new threshold a middle-class measure and to note it exceeds the US median household income of $83,730. Many families with median incomes struggle to afford housing, transport, food, childcare, and rising health insurance. The lived experience of affordability differs from macroeconomic indicators such as labour market resilience. The mismatch between official poverty measures and everyday costs highlights gaps in how economic wellbeing is assessed and communicated.

Read at www.theguardian.com