It’s complicated. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development calculates a “median family income” every year for every county in the United States. For Humboldt County, the 2011 MFI is $54,900. But that median changes depending on family size, so whether you are low income depends on how much money all the people living with you make, combined. Then, the feds group your household into “low” “very low” and “extremely low.” Follow our chart to see where you fit.

Carrie Peyton Dahlberg was editor of the North Coast Journal from June 2011 to November 2013.

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10 Comments

  1. My wife, daughter and I are currently LOW INCOME…. But when our new baby is born in a few months we will drop down to VERY LOW INCOME. Yikes. I knew we had it rough, but putting it like that scares me a bit. We still don’t qualify for food stamps or Medi-Cal.

  2. I’m a local small business owner in my 30s, and fall into the “very low income” category. So do most of my friends in their 20s and 30s.

  3. I’m the wife of a small business owner. I also have a full time job and a college degree, we also fall into the low income category and if we choose to have children we would be in the very low income category.

  4. I watch low income families have another kid and wonder why they can’t do the arithmetic: Whatever little college fund they could have socked away for the first kid will now have to be divided between two, then three, etc. and if they hadn’t had kids, they could have been saving for a few comforts in old age.

  5. Do the math, you clown. Anyone has the “right” and anyone can come up with their own “reason” to have kids. But they shouldn’t act surprised when it lowers their standard of living.

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