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.
Behavioral health refers to all behaviors that impact health. Mental health and substance use disorders are a very small, but attention getting subset of behavioral health, which includes behaviors related to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, HIV, even ebola, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases.