Presenters : Man Nguyen, Eric Wittkop, Emily White
Mentor : William Harbaugh
Major : Economics
Poster 5
Many US households earn an income greater than that specified by the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), a measure of poverty that does not vary across the 48 contiguous states, however, many households in the U.S who stand above the FPL still struggle to meet their basic needs and be financially self-sufficient. Although the FPL does not take into account the actual quantity of money required to meet the basic cost of living expenses across the United States, many financial assistance programs are designed solely to assist people below this line, especially federally administered programs. As there exists a percentage of population who stands above the 100% FPL but still not able to be self-sufficient, it is the ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) population. We are working on the research with United Way of Lane County who seeks a way to calculate the percentage population of ALICE and its distribution in Lane County. It is important to know the ALICE population as ALICEs has been suffering without sufficient income that will lead to a short and long-term suffering to the whole community. Our methodology is focused on meeting two separate objectives. The first objective is to calculate the number and percentage of ALICE population in Lane County. The second objective is to create a predictive model that will give United Way a tool to estimate future fluctuations in the size (but not the distribution) of the Lane County ALICE population so that they can better direct their programming to serve this group.