An investor called $140,000 the new poverty line. Experts disagreed but said he had a point. [View all]

Michael Green’s tally of the costs of raising a family in the U.S. today is going viral, even if some economists scoff at his math.

Michael W. Green did some math recently. For a family of four to afford housing, health care, child care and other necessities, he calculated that they would need at least $136,500 a year.

The U.S. poverty line, the number that the Department of Health and Human Services says is necessary to keep a family out of poverty, is $32,150 for a family of four. Green says it should be more than four times that — a figure that would mean the majority of American households are living “in poverty,” by his metric.

His idea, which he published in an essay on Substack this week, has made waves among economists and activists, with some praising Green’s approach to assessing the real cost of living, and others finding his claim that a six-figure income could be considered poverty wages to be ludicrous.

Green’s new fans are effusive: “The most important thing most of us will read all year.” “The best read of the year.” “Can’t unsee what you learned.”

So are his detractors: “It’s completely disconnected from reality,” American Enterprise Institute economist Kevin Corinth said. “It’s laughable to put a poverty line far above the median income in the United States.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/29/poverty-line-green/