The US gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing low­er­ing the poverty level, which would bring changes to who receives ben­e­fits. Those who are right on the edge of the qual­i­fi­ca­tion lev­els could see their gov­ern­ment ben­e­fits dis­ap­pear since they would no longer meet qual­i­fi­ca­tions to receive benfits.

As an very rough exam­ple, say a state pro­vides health insur­ance for those who at 200 per­cent of the poverty level or under. The fig­ures are not exact but lets say that the Smith fam­ily makes 2,000 dol­lars a month which would be right at 200 per­cent of the poverty level. When that level is dropped, the Smith fam­ily are all of a sud­den be at 225 per­cent of the poverty level, despite no change of income for the family.

From Vermont’s Times Argus, writer Daniel Bar­low explains this further.

For exam­ple, for a sin­gle per­son to qual­ify for a state or fed­eral pro­gram that cov­ers up to 100 per­cent of the fed­eral poverty level they would need to make less than $906 a month. Start­ing next year, that bench­mark changes to $899 a month for a sin­gle person.

Seven dol­lars may not seem like a dra­matic shift, but the gap increases for larger fam­i­lies, accord­ing to Peter Ster­ling, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the orga­ni­za­tion Ver­mont Cam­paign for Health Care Security.

Ster­ling said the decrease in what the fed­eral gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers poverty could have low-to-moderate income Ver­mon­ters pay­ing more for their ser­vices or sud­denly dis­cov­er­ing they make too much to apply for help they are get­ting now.

“This will impact every­thing from food stamps to home heat­ing fuel assis­tance,” said Ster­ling. “How many peo­ple are mak­ing 299 per­cent of the fed­eral poverty level and will soon find out that they no longer qual­ify for services?”

The fed­eral gov­ern­ment first began gaug­ing what the fed­eral poverty level is – the min­i­mum amount a per­son can makes to be con­sid­ered in poverty – in Decem­ber 1965, set­ting the rate as $1,540 a year for a sin­gle per­son or $3,130 for a fam­ily of four. At the time, the median income in the United States was $6,882, accord­ing to Cen­sus date.

In 2007, when the median income was $50,233 a year, the fed­eral poverty level was set at $10,210 for a sin­gle per­son and $20,650 for a fam­ily of four. Cre­at­ing a new fed­eral poverty level involves a com­pli­cated cal­cu­la­tion that is tied to the country’s con­sumer price index, sim­i­lar to how ben­e­fits for Social Secu­rity are decided.

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