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2008
POVERTY GUIDELINESMinimum Income Requirements
These poverty guidelines remain in effect until new poverty guidelines go into effect in
the Spring of 2009.
| Persons in Family or Household |
48 Contiguous States and D.C. |
Alaska | Hawaii |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $10,400 | $13,000 | $11,960 |
| 2 | 14,000 | 17,500 | 16,100 |
| 3 | 17,600 | 22,000 | 20,240 |
| 4 | 21,200 | 26,500 | 24,380 |
| 5 | 24,800 | 31,000 | 28,520 |
| 6 | 28,400 | 35,500 | 32,660 |
| 7 | 32,000 | 40,000 | 36,800 |
| 8 | 35,600 | 44,500 | 40,940 |
| For each additional person, add |
3,600 | 4,500 | 4,140 |
If you cannot meet the minimum income requirements using your earned income, you have various options:
- You may add the cash value of your assets such as money in savings accounts, stocks, bonds, and property.
- You may count the income and assets of members of your household
who are related to you by birth, marriage, or adoption. To use their
income you must have listed them as dependents on your most recent federal tax
return or they must have lived with you for the last 6
months.
- You may count the assets of the relatives you are sponsoring.
The separate poverty guidelines for Alaska and Hawaii reflect Office of Economic Opportunity administrative practice beginning in the 1966-1970 period. Note that the poverty thresholds — the original version of the poverty measure — have never had separate figures for Alaska and Hawaii. The poverty guidelines are not defined for Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Palau. In cases in which a Federal program using the poverty guidelines serves any of those jurisdictions, the Federal office which administers the program is responsible for deciding whether to use the contiguous-states-and-D.C. guidelines for those jurisdictions or to follow some other procedure.
The poverty guidelines apply to both aged and non-aged units. The guidelines have never had an aged/non-aged distinction; only the Census Bureau (statistical) poverty thresholds have separate figures for aged and non-aged one-person and two-person units.
Programs using the guidelines (or percentage multiples of the guidelines — for instance, 125 percent or 185 percent of the guidelines) in determining eligibility include Head Start, the Food Stamp Program, the National School Lunch Program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Note that in general, cash public assistance programs (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income) do NOT use the poverty guidelines in determining eligibility. The Earned Income Tax Credit program also does NOT use the poverty guidelines to determine eligibility.