The official measure of poverty of the U.S. government is called the poverty line.

• A. living wage
• B. threshold
• C. poverty line
• D. minimum income

Answer: (C)

The main idea is the official measure the U.S. government uses to categorize poverty, which is the poverty line. This is the income level that separates those considered poor from those who aren’t for purposes of statistics and eligibility for programs. It’s not simply a “living wage,” which is a judgment about what someone must earn to meet basic needs and varies by location. It isn’t just a generic cutoff either, since the government explicitly defines the poverty line as the threshold used in policy and federal data. In practice, the line is calculated as a specific dollar amount tied to family size (historically linked to the cost of a minimum food budget and adjusted over time for inflation), so families with income below that line are counted as poor. That combination of being the official, policy-used standard is what makes this term the best answer.