Where can I find the official HHS 2026 poverty guideline table (full dollar amounts) by household size for the contiguous U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii?
Executive summary
The official HHS source for the annual poverty guidelines is the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE); its poverty-guidelines page hosts the current tables and downloadable PDFs that list full dollar amounts by household size for the contiguous U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii [1]. Secondary aggregators — including the LIHEAP Clearinghouse and policy reference PDFs used for coverage-year rules — reproduce those official figures for program administrators and the public [2] [3].
1. Where HHS publishes the official table — ASPE’s poverty-guidelines page
The authoritative starting point is ASPE’s “Poverty Guidelines” web page, which is the HHS office responsible for issuing the guidelines and that hosts the detailed tables and FAQs explaining differences between the poverty thresholds and the guidelines [1]. That page includes separate poverty-guideline tables for the 48 contiguous states and D.C., and distinct higher figures for Alaska and for Hawaii — a long-standing administrative practice reflected on ASPE [1].
2. Direct PDFs and “detailed guidelines” for specific years
ASPE typically posts year-specific PDF tables (for example, ASPE’s 2025 “detailed-guidelines” PDF contains full dollar amounts by household size for the 48 contiguous states and indicates separate entries for Alaska and Hawaii) and those PDFs are the most convenient way to obtain the exact dollar figures for each household size [4]. If a user needs the HHS-published table labeled for 2026, the expectation is to retrieve the analogous ASPE PDF for 2026 from the same ASPE page once HHS posts it for the year in question [1] [4].
3. Program reference charts and coverage-year notes — where policy users often look
Policy shops and marketplaces sometimes publish their own “reference” charts that apply HHS poverty guidelines to program rules (for example, a coverage-year 2026 reference chart used for Marketplace subsidy eligibility summarizes 2025 poverty figures for 2026 coverage and cites ASPE as the source) — these are useful cross-checks but are derivative of ASPE’s official tables [3]. Such aggregator charts can clarify how to apply the guidelines (for instance, multipliers for households larger than eight), but the underlying legal/administrative numbers remain those on the HHS/ASPE page [3].
4. Alternate official-leaning sources — LIHEAP and state program pages
Federal program hubs like the LIHEAP Clearinghouse publish federal poverty guideline tables used for fiscal-year 2026 operations and note how to prorate or add per-person increments for households over eight members; these sources are helpful for program implementers and confirm ASPE’s figures from a policy-application perspective [2]. Because LIHEAP is aggregating HHS guidance for energy-assistance program use, its FFY2026 tables can be treated as corroborating, but they are secondary to ASPE’s official posting [2].
5. Practical search and verification steps
To obtain the official HHS 2026 poverty guideline table with full dollar amounts: go to ASPE’s poverty-guidelines page and download the year‑labeled PDF (ASPE is the issuing office and hosts the detailed tables) [1]. If the specific “2026” PDF is not yet posted, check for HHS/ASPE announcements and the year-labeled “detailed-guidelines” PDF for the most recent year [4], and use reputable aggregators such as the LIHEAP Clearinghouse or the coverage-year reference charts to corroborate per-person add-ons or application notes [2] [3]. This reporting is limited to the documents and pages available from ASPE and the cited aggregators; if an actual ASPE 2026 PDF was posted after these sources were captured, it is not included here [1] [4].