Overview
- Investor Michael Green’s Substack argues a family of four needs roughly $140,000 to cover 2024 basics, totaling average costs for childcare, housing, food, transportation, health care, other essentials and taxes.
- The federal poverty level for a family of four is about $32,150, and the 2024 median household income was roughly $83,730, benchmarks critics cite to call the six‑figure threshold unrealistic.
- Economists including Noah Smith and AEI’s Scott Winship fault the use of averages and center‑based childcare assumptions, arguing the approach reflects a higher living standard and not poverty conditions.
- Green frames his case as measuring modern precarity, while alternative calculators like EPI’s show six‑figure family budgets in high‑cost counties (about $123,000 in New Jersey’s Essex County) without labeling them as poverty.
- The discussion has shifted to whether the official measure is outdated, with references to tools like the Supplemental Poverty Measure, yet no federal change to poverty thresholds or policy has been announced.