It is the national median though, which completely loses the fine-grained detail built into the national poverty statistics that adjust for cost of living at th

It is the national median though, which completely loses the fine-grained detail built into the national poverty statistics that adjust for cost of living at the state level. I don't think I would actually say the federal metric itself is particularly useful, but so much existing data depends on it that it seems crazy to reinvent the meaning of what the poverty line is for one specific study.