Sometimes, you get lucky. I Googled "poverty level" + .gov (meaning it is a government site), and found this.
THE 2004 HHS POVERTY GUIDELINES One Version of the [U.S.] Federal Poverty Measure
There are two slightly different versions of the federal poverty measure:
* The poverty thresholds, and
* The poverty guidelines.
The poverty thresholds are the original version of the federal poverty measure. They are updated each year by the Census Bureau (although they were originally developed by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration). The thresholds are used mainly for statistical purposes — for instance, preparing estimates of the number of Americans in poverty each year. (In other words, all official poverty population figures are calculated using the poverty thresholds, not the guidelines.) Poverty thresholds since 1980 and weighted average poverty thresholds since 1959 are available on the Census Bureau’s Web site. For an example of how the Census Bureau applies the thresholds to a family’s income to determine its poverty status, see “How the Census Bureau Measures Poverty” on the Census Bureau’s web site.
The poverty guidelines are the other version of the federal poverty measure. They are issued each year in the Federal Register by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The guidelines are a simplification of the poverty thresholds for use for administrative purposes — for instance, determining financial eligibility for certain federal programs. (The full text of the Federal Register notice with the 2004 poverty guidelines is available here.)
The poverty guidelines are sometimes loosely referred to as the “federal poverty level” (FPL), but that phrase is ambiguous and should be avoided, especially in situations (e.g., legislative or administrative) where precision is important.
Key differences between poverty thresholds and poverty guidelines are outlined in a table under Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). See also the discussion of this topic on the Institute for Research on Poverty's web site.
2004 HHS Poverty Guidelines
# of persons.....48 States and D.C.....Alaska......Hawaii
...1..............$ 9,310..............$11,630.....$10,700
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Federal Poverty Level Guidelines Effective February 2006
Group size........AnnualFPL
...1...............$9,800
Source: Wisconsin Medicaid
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Figures for the top 1% will be harder to find, mainly because sucjh tables are usually in pdf files, which take forever to open, so I usually don't. However, figures can be extrapulated from pieces of information.
Figures for the very rich are staggering: between 1979 and 2000, average income for the top 1% grew by 184%. With average income 33.3 times larger than the bottom fifth in 1979, the highest 1% ballooned to 88.5 times larger in 2000. As a piece of this, parenthetically, the average compensation for CEOs grew 342% between 1989 and 2000.2 All of these results are virtually the same before and after taxes, and there is no significant change if we add the effects of employer-provided health care, government housing subsidies, food stamps, and the like. By any sensible income definition, “persistent and comparable growth in inequality” becomes apparent.3 Figures for income distribution, moreover, understate the matter, because the distribution of wealth is even more unequal.4 - University of Chicago --------
This
information, from Wikipedia, shows the quintiles. The top 5% of households has an income of $157,176. Naturally, the top 1% will have an income much higher. The lowest quintile is less than $18,500. (The figure for the lowest isn't given, but the figure for tyhe second lowest is $18,500.)
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In 2003, just 1% of all households -- those with after-tax incomes averaging $701,500. -
University of California at Santa CruThis might tell you something.
"While tax cuts can enable households to increase their consumption even if their pre-tax incomes did not increase, the tax cuts enacted since 2001 have given the largest benefits to high-income families. The top fifth of families received an average tax cut of $4,845 in 2005, according to the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, enough to help them improve their standard of living despite the lack of improvement in their average pre-tax income.[1] The bottom fifth of households, in contrast, received an average tax cut of just $18 in 2005, not enough to have a meaningful effect on their consumption." -
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities"From 2003 to 2004, the average incomes of the bottom 99 percent of households grew by less than 3 percent, after adjusting for inflation. In contrast, the average incomes of the top one percent of households experienced a jump of more than 18 percent, after adjusting for inflation. (Census data show that real median income fell between 2003 and 2004. Average income is pulled up by gains at the top of the income spectrum; much of the 2.3 percent rise among the bottom 99 percent seems to largely reflects gains by households in the top decile of the income spectrum. In contrast, trends in median income capture the experience of households in the middle of the income spectrum.)
"The top one percent of households (those with annual incomes above about $315,000 in 2004) garnered 53 percent of the income gains in 2004.
"The share of the pre-tax income in the nation that goes to the top one percent of households increased from 17.5 percent in 2003 to 19.8 percent in 2004.
"Income gains were even more pronounced among those with the very highest incomes. The incomes of the top one-tenth of one percent of households grew more rapidly than the incomes of the top one percent of households. The share of the national income received by the top one tenth of one percent of households increased by 1.6 percentage points from 2003 to 2004; in other words, more than half of the increased share of income going to the top one percent of households actually went to the top one-tenth of one percent of households.
"Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has frequently raised concerns about the long-term trend towards increased income inequality and evidence that this trend is continuing. In July 2005 Congressional testimony, for example, Greenspan said that there is a “really serious problem here, as I’ve mentioned many times before this [House] committee, in the consequent concentration of income that is rising." -
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities The lower limit of income for ther top 5% of individuals for 2005 is $166,000. - Census.gov Over all, average incomes rose 27 percent in real terms over the quarter-century from 1979 through 2004. But the gains were narrowly concentrated at the top and offset by losses for the bottom 60 percent of Americans, those making less than $38,761 in 2004.
The bottom 60 percent of Americans, on average, made less than 95 cents in 2004 for each dollar they reported in 1979, analysis of the I.R.S. data shows.
The next best-off group, the fifth of Americans on the 60th to 80th rungs of the income ladder, averaged 2 cents more income in 2004 for each dollar they earned in 1979.
Only those in the top 5 percent had significant gains. The average income of those on the 95th to 99th rungs of the income ladder rose by 53 percent, almost twice the average rate.
A third of the entire national increase in reported income went to the top 1 percent — and more than half of that went to the top tenth of 1 percent, whose average incomes soared so much that for each dollar, adjusted for inflation, that they had in 1979 they had $3.48 in 2004.
Because of cuts in the tax rate, the top tenth of 1 percent did even better than their rising incomes alone would suggest. For each inflation-adjusted dollar they had after tax in 1979 they had $3.94 left after taxes in 2004. - The Economist (Bold mine - DG)
