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.
A test score in and of itself is usually difficult to interpret. For example, if you learned that your score on a measure of shyness was 35 out of a possible 50, you would have little idea how shy you are compared to other people. More relevant is the percentage of people with lower shyness scores than yours.