In 2014, the Census Bureau implemented a complete redesign of the health insurance questions in the CPS ASEC. The new questions improve upon the previous questionnaire, which produced health insurance estimates that were not in line with those produced by other federal surveys or administrative records. However, because of the redesign, the estimates for years 2013 and later are not directly comparable to 2012 and prior years. Estimates for earlier years are therefore not included in the graphing utility.

To classify people as poor, the Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition. If a family's total income is below the poverty threshold relevant to that family, then every individual in the family is classified as poor. The official poverty thresholds do not vary geographically, but they are updated for inflation using the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes as its measure of income, and it does not include capital gains or noncash benefits such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps. For more information, see the Census Bureau’s poverty definitions.