<P> Other policy analysts, such as Rebecca Blank of the Brookings Institute, have criticized the outdated foundations of the formula for the federal poverty line of 3 x the subsistence food budget . This formula is based on the 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey, which found that in emergency situation when funds were low, a family of three spent one third of their after tax income on food . From this fact it was extrapolated that three times the subsistence food budget was the poverty line for a family of three . Based on more current household surveys of food consumption it is estimated that in 2008 the food multiplier would be 7.8 rather than 3 times a subsistence food budget . </P> <P> Many sociologists and government officials have argued that poverty in the United States is understated, meaning that there are more households living in actual poverty than there are households below the poverty threshold . A recent NPR report states that as many as 30% of Americans have trouble making ends meet and other advocates have made supporting claims that the rate of actual poverty in the US is far higher than that calculated by using the poverty threshold . A study taken in 2012 estimated that roughly 38% of Americans live "paycheck to paycheck ." </P> <P> According to William H. Chafe, if one used a relative standard for measuring poverty (a standard that took into account the rising standards of living rather than an absolute dollar figure) then 18% of families were living in poverty in 1968, not 13% as officially estimated at that time . </P> <P> As far back as 1969, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put forward suggested budgets for adequate family living . 60% of working - class Americans lived below one of these budgets, which suggested that a far higher proportion of Americans lived in poverty than the official poverty line suggested . These findings were also used by observers on the left when questioning the long - established view that most Americans had attained an affluent standard of living in the two decades following the end of the Second World War . </P>

The u.s. poverty line established by the federal government is a measure of absolute poverty