Who is ALICE?
ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) is a metric used to measure the amount of individuals and families who are employed yet unable to afford basic necessities. It is an alternative to the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), and takes a more updated approach to calculating a survival budget for the modern-day person, taking into consideration inflation and more recent expenses.
ALICE is the nation’s child care workers, home health aides and cashiers, the essential workers–those working low-wage jobs, with little or no savings and one emergency from poverty. They make more than the Federal Poverty Level but less than what's needed to survive in the modern economy.
Another option:
ALICE represents the 31% of Eastern Idahoans who work, but struggle to survive. ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.
ALICE earns above the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), but makes less than what’s needed to afford basic essentials. ALICE often earns too much to qualify for government assistance, and there is no room in ALICE’s budget for emergency expenses. If you combine Eastern Idaho households earning below the ALICE Threshold with those living below the FPL, that’s 44% of Eastern Idaho households who face financial hardship every day.
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35,715 households (44%) live below the ALICE Threshold
Estimated Survival Budget 4-person household under $78,216 annual income
Federal Poverty Level 4-person household under $30,000 annual income
Above the ALICE Threshold 4-person household over $78,216 annual income
Updated Idaho ALICE Report
United for ALICE conducts high-quality research to understand financial hardship across the U.S. The scope goes from as broad as the whole nation and as narrow as individual counties in each of their partner states. They used to report their findings every two years but are now updating their reports yearly. The latest report was published in May 2025. The data for Idaho shows that for eastern Idaho, 10,662 households are living in poverty and another 25,053 households are defined as ALICE.
Report Highlights
- In 2023, of Idaho’s 721,351 households, 10% (75,682) were below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), and another 31% (221,268) were ALICE — households with income above the FPL, but not enough to afford the ALICE Household Survival Budget for their household composition and location. Combining these two groups, 41% (296,950) of households in Idaho were below the ALICE Threshold.
- In 2023, 75% of the 20 most common jobs in Idaho paid less than $20 per hour. As a result, many of these top jobs still had a substantial percentage of workers who were either ALICE or in poverty in 2023.
- Single female-headed households had among the highest rates of hardship. Three quarters – 75% – of eastern Idaho’s single female-headed households could not afford basics in 2023.
- In 2023, the youngest and oldest households had the highest rates of financial hardship: 69% of households headed by someone under age 25 and 48% of households headed by someone age 65 and over lived below the ALICE Threshold in Idaho.
