What are the 2024 poverty guidelines for a family of four?

1. What the 2024 guidelines are and how they were set

The 2024 HHS poverty guidelines are a simplified, annually updated version of the Census Bureau’s poverty thresholds, adjusted to reflect inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI‑U); the 2024 update reflects a 4.1 percent price increase between calendar years 2022 and 2023, after which the figures are rounded and standardized across family sizes ^{[2] [4]}. HHS and ASPE publish the guidelines and computations, and they explicitly note the guidelines are used as simplified income benchmarks for programs—while each program defines its own rules about household composition and which income counts for eligibility ^{[1] [3] [2]}.

2. The specific figure for a family of four — where it lives in the record

The authoritative, tabled dollar amount for a family/household of four for 2024 appears in the HHS/ASPE 2024 poverty guidelines table and in the Federal Register “Annual Update of the HHS Poverty Guidelines” notice; those official documents are the source for any program that applies the FPL for eligibility (ASPE detailed guidelines and computations; Federal Register notice) ^{[1] [3] [2]}. The excerpts available in this briefing confirm the existence of the family‑of‑four entry and the formula used to update it but do not include the numeric line‑item value in the provided snippets, so the precise dollar figure cannot be reproduced here without accessing the full HHS/ASPE table ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Geography and per‑person add‑ons that matter for interpretation

The HHS poverty guidelines are published separately for the 48 contiguous states and DC, for Alaska, and for Hawaii; they also specify an add‑on amount for households larger than eight persons (the Federal Register notice instructs to add $5,380 for each additional person beyond eight in the 2024 tables) ^{[2] [5]}. Because many programs apply a percentage multiple of the guideline (for example, Medicaid or CHIP eligibility rules often use 133 percent, 150 percent, 185 percent, or 200 percent of the guideline), the family‑of‑four line is frequently converted into program thresholds by multiplying the published FPL amount by the program’s specified percentage ^{[4] [6]}.

4. Practical implications and limitations of the published figure

The guideline figure itself is a legal and administrative benchmark rather than a measure intended to capture every element of poverty; HHS and ASPE caution that the poverty guidelines are not identical to the Census Bureau’s technical poverty thresholds used for statistical counts, and that program administrators must define terms like “income” and “family” when applying the guideline ^{[7] [2]}. Users should consult the HHS/ASPE 2024 table or the Federal Register notice for the exact family‑of‑four dollar amount and then check the particular program’s definition and multiplier (for example, Medicaid state rules or Marketplace eligibility) to determine the applied income cutoff ^{[1] [4] [2]}.

5. Where to get the authoritative number now

The official 2024 poverty guideline tables for the 48 contiguous states (and separate tables for Alaska and Hawaii) and the detailed computations are available on the HHS/ASPE website and in the Federal Register notice titled “Annual Update of the HHS Poverty Guidelines” (January 17, 2024); those sources contain the exact annual dollar figure for a family of four and are the documents programs cite when setting eligibility ^{[1] [3] [2]}. The sources in this briefing confirm the methodology and publication venues, but the exact numeric line item for a family of four must be read directly from the HHS/ASPE table in the linked documents ^{[1] [2]}.