What is the 2025 federal poverty level for a single-person household by state?
Executive summary
The 2025 Federal Poverty Level (FPL) for a single-person household is $15,650 for the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia and U.S. territories that follow the contiguous guideline, $19,550 in Alaska, and $17,990 in Hawaii [1] [2] [3]. These HHS-issued guidelines are the administrative figures used by federal programs and many states to determine eligibility for benefits such as Medicaid, CHIP, and premium tax credits [4] [5].
1. The headline numbers: one FPL, three dollar amounts
For calendar year 2025 HHS publishes a single standard poverty guideline for the 48 contiguous states (including the District of Columbia and certain territories that adopt that figure) set at $15,650 for a one-person household, while Alaska and Hawaii have higher, separately listed one-person amounts — $19,550 and $17,990 respectively — reflecting administrative adjustments historically applied to those states [3] [2] [1].
2. Why one number covers most states — and why Alaska and Hawaii differ
HHS issues a contiguous-48 guideline intended to serve as the base poverty level for most states, plus separate guidelines for Alaska and Hawaii rooted in administrative practice dating back decades; those higher figures account for different living cost structures and have been retained in HHS tables since the 1960s [3] [5]. The practical result is that for nearly every state on the continental U.S. the 2025 single-person FPL is identical — $15,650 — while Alaska and Hawaii are explicitly higher in the HHS schedule [1] [2].
3. How these numbers get used in policy and eligibility calculations
Federal programs and state agencies reference HHS poverty guidelines to set income eligibility cutoffs and to compute percentages of FPL — for example Medicaid expansion thresholds, CHIP, premium tax credit determinations, and fee-waiver rules — but each program applies its own percentage of FPL and its own rules for household composition and income counting, so a person at the $15,650 mark may be eligible for one program and ineligible for another depending on those program rules [4] [5] [6].
4. Common misreadings and reporting traps
News summaries sometimes present FPL as though it varies by county or state beyond the Alaska/Hawaii exceptions; that is misleading because, for 2025, HHS’s administrative guideline is uniform across the 48 contiguous states and many territorial uses unless a program elects a state-specific standard — programs instead commonly apply different percentages of the federal guideline [3] [4] [5]. External sites and nonprofits reproduce the same three 2025 one-person figures — $15,650; $19,550; $17,990 — but may emphasize different months or program-year uses, creating confusion about which FPL applies to a particular benefit year [1] [2].
5. The limits of this reporting and what was not found
The available sources establish the 2025 single-person poverty guidelines for the contiguous U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii but do not list any alternative single-person figures per individual state beyond those three amounts, nor do they provide state-adopted deviations (if any) for program-specific rules; therefore a definitive state-by-state table beyond the contiguous/Alaska/Hawaii split cannot be produced from the provided reporting alone [3] [4] [1]. Program administrators and some states may apply different percentage thresholds or rounding rules; readers should consult specific program guidance or state benefit offices for final eligibility cutoffs [5] [6].
6. Bottom line for one-person households in 2025
A person seeking a crisp, state-by-state figure for the 2025 FPL for a single-person household will find three authoritative numbers from HHS: $15,650 for the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia (and territories that adopt that guideline), $19,550 for Alaska, and $17,990 for Hawaii — these are the official administrative poverty guidelines used as the baseline for most federal eligibility calculations in 2025 [3] [1] [2].