In addition to this, poverty levels were set like 80 years ago based on the cost of food alone. They took an “average” grocery order, made up, and used a set percentage to extrapolate out. So say the recommendation is 30% of your income on food and then average spend was $100 ->100/0.3= $333.

So while the levels haven’t been updated in a long time, simultaneously we’ve added whole sectors of the economy that weren’t envisioned when this calculation was performed. Transportation and education are huge expenses that used to be much cheaper or nearly free. Add to that the fact that housing, transportation, education, and medical costs have skyrocketed above average inflation, and the poverty numbers are worse than meaningless.