Poverty Programs and Prices: How Adjusting for Costs of Living Would Affect Federal Benefit Eligibility

Public policies rarely account for regional differences in living costs across the country. Applying cost-of-living adjustments to measurements of economic well-being and eligibility standards for social programs in 98 central cities reveals that: • Federal poverty guidelines, often used to determine eligibility for social programs, change significantly when indexed for cost of living (COL) differences. Out of 38 large cities in higher-cost areas in the Northeast and West, 36 experience increases in the federal poverty guidelines. Conversely, more than half of the large cities located in lower-cost areas in the South and Midwest (38 of 60) see shifts in the opposite direction. • The percentage, number, and distribution of families that are considered poor under federal poverty guidelines would change dramatically in many central cities if regional differences in the cost of living were recognized. In high-cost areas on the East and West coasts, the poor population would increase substantially both in real and proportional terms. Cities like New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA rank among those with the greatest increases in both the number and proportion of poor families under COL-adjusted standards. However, cities in lower-cost areas of the South and West, such as E