HEIGHT Poverty Dashboard

Analysts and policymakers often compare income to the federal poverty threshold to determine an individual's ability to obtain a certain standard of living. But the federal poverty measure, which is used to determine eligibility for many types of government assistance — does not account for living costs beyond a basic food budget. In the decades since the federal poverty measure was created, the costs of housing, transportation, child care and health care have risen far more rapidly than food costs, and even faster than wages. Furthermore, the national measure does not account for the regional variations in living costs, and these cost differentials in many neighborhoods, especially in Maricopa County, are significantly higher than state or national averages.

The HEIGHT Poverty Tool measures and visualizes the true costs of living at the county and neighborhood level, highlighting the emerging gap between household income and living costs as of the fiscal year ending June 30, 2020. The tool builds a living cost budget for various family sizes accounting for the costs of food, housing, health care, child care, transportation, taxes and other essential needs. Analyzing those local costs of living with the household’s income data, the tool determines how many families are struggling to meet basic living costs. This dashboard emphasizes poverty in families with different characteristics — whether the household includes children, whether the head of household is male or female, the number of adults in the household and ethnicity of householders — to enable communities to design interventions targeted to their specific needs.

Click here to read more about the data and methods used to create this tool.