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GAO-10-240R 1 (2009-11-10)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaanqd0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GA 0 A o bintabity I integrity I Rehability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 November 10, 2009 The Honorable Jeff Bingaman Chairman Lisa Murkowski Ranking Member Committee on Energy and Natural Resources United States Senate The Honorable Madeleine Z. Bordallo Chairwoman Henry E. Brown, Jr. Ranking Member Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife Committee on Natural Resources House of Representatives Subject: Poverty Determination in U.S. Insular Areas Owing to high levels of poverty, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), Guam, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) rely heavily on need-based federal programs to provide basic services.! Two federal agencies publish measures used by some federal programs to determine poverty status and allocate need-based assistance: the Census Bureau (Census) publishes poverty thresholds-dollar-value benchmarks for determining poverty status-and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provides poverty guidelines, which are derived from the poverty thresholds. The approaches used to determine these poverty measures affect, respectively, poverty population statistics and income eligibility of individuals and families for certain need-based federal assistance. The poverty thresholds apply nationwide and in the insular areas, with no geographic variation, while separate poverty guidelines for Alaska and Hawaii, but not for the insular areas, have been provided since 1970. 'According to the U.S. Census Bureau (Census), in 1999, the percentage of individuals in poverty ranged from 23 in Guam-nearly twice as high as the continental U.S. poverty rate of 12 percent-to 61 in American Samoa (see encl. II). For more information about reliance on federal programs in American Samoa, the CNMI, Guam, and the USVI, see GAO, U.S. Insular Areas: Economic, Fiscal, and Financial Accountability Challenges, GAO-07-119 (Washington, D.C.: Dec. 12, 2006). GAO-10-240R Poverty Determination in U.S. Insular Areas

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