LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) — Today’s Good Question is: Who sets the federal poverty level?

The Department of Health and Human Services sets the federal poverty guidelines each year through the Federal Register.

The current poverty guideline for a family of four is $32,150.

Origins in the 1960s

The federal poverty guidelines first started being issued in the 1960s. Statistician Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration developed a formula that multiplied the cost of food and set thresholds for poverty.

Orshansky said those thresholds were a measure of income inadequacy, not of income adequacy. She wrote that “if it is not possible to state unequivocally ‘how much is enough,’ it should be possible to assert with confidence how much, on an average, is too little.”

How the formu

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