Housing Section 8 Low-Income Housing Assistance
Provides rental assistance through vouchers or rental subsidies to eligible low-income families
Source: Nilsen, S. (2007). Poverty in America—Report to Congressional Requesters. Washington, DC: United States Government Accountability Office.
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noncash benefits, such as employer-provided health insurance, food stamps, or Medicaid. The poverty-level figures are used by programs, such as Head Start, Low-Income Home Energy, and National School Lunch, to determine eligibility (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011).
3. Determining the poverty status, for people not living in families, by comparing the individual’s income to his or her threshold. The poverty thresholds are updated annually to allow for changes in the cost of living using the Consumer Price Index (Bishaw & Macartney, 2010, p. 1).
The poverty threshold for an average family of four was $23,018 in 2011. Table 3–8 lists the poverty weighted threshold for persons in a household
for selected years. The association between socioeconomic status and the health status of
a person or family may be explained in part by the reduced access to health care among those with lower socioeconomic status. Income may be related to health because it
■ increases access to health care; ■ enables the person or family to live in a better neighborhood; ■ enables the person or family to afford better housing; ■ enables the person or family to reside in locations not abutting known
environmentally degraded locations (heavy industrial pollution or known hazardous waste sites)