Topics: Economics and Personal Finances, Socioeconomic Class. 1  Richard Fry is a senior researcher focusing on economics and education at Pew Research Center. 2  Rakesh Kochhar is an associate director of research at Pew Research Center.
In the United States, the Census Bureau determines who is poor using an economic poverty measure, by calculating official poverty estimates using a set of dollar-value thresholds, or minimum amount of income needed to meet basic needs, that vary by family size and composition.
Behaviors may reflect poor attention and concentration, slowness in responding, tendencies to go task behavior, general disorganization, predilection for concrete activities, overactivity or passivity, low frustration tolerance, mood swings, silly affect, fearfulness, dysphoria, anger, poor common sense, and naivete. naÃ¯vetÃ©