Topics: Economics and Personal Finances, Socioeconomic Class. 1  Richard Fry is a senior researcher focusing on economics and education at Pew Research Center. 2  Rakesh Kochhar is an associate director of research at Pew Research Center.
In the United States, the Census Bureau determines who is poor using an economic poverty measure, by calculating official poverty estimates using a set of dollar-value thresholds, or minimum amount of income needed to meet basic needs, that vary by family size and composition.
1 **. Rural residents are less likely to have employer-provided health care coverage or prescription drug coverage, and the rural poor are less likely to be covered by Medicaid benefits than their urban counterparts.**WWAMI Rural Health Research Center study, funded by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, described in: Baldwin L-M, MacLehouse RF, Hart LG, Beaver SK, Every N, Chan L: Quality of care for acute myocardial infarction in rural and urban U.S. hospitals.