Malia, a single mother of two, works full-time as a medical assistant in Honolulu, earning about $47,000 a year. Malia spends 60% of her paycheck on rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Kalihi, and most weeks, she runs out of money for groceries, so she relies on local food banks until her next paycheck. When her daughter needed urgent care last month, Malia delayed the visit for three days because she was between insurance coverage. Her 15-year-old car broke down, and without $1,200 for repairs, she now spends 3 hours a day on TheBus getting to work and to her kids' school.
By the government's measure, Malia isn't poor because her income is well above the poverty threshold of $39,852 for a family of three, so she does not qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, or SNAP.
Malia's story reveals a critical gap in how we understand economic hardship in Hawaiʻi: the official poverty rate was 10.1% in 2023, suggesting nine out of 10 Hawaiʻi residents are doing fine. But that single number, based only on income, masks the reality that hundreds of thousands of families face compounding challenges that income alone can't measure.
The measurement gap
For more than 60 years, the United States has measured poverty the same way: calculate the minimum income needed to afford food, multiply by three, and adjust for family size. If your income falls below that threshold, you're officially poor. If it doesn't, you're not.
This approach made sense in 1963 when the poverty line was created, and families spent about one-third of their income on food. But it hasn't kept pace with how family budgets have changed, especially in Hawaiʻi, where housing, not food, has become the dominant expense.
The federal poverty threshold for a family of three is $24,860. Hawaiʻi's official threshold is about 15% higher, at roughly $28,000, to account for our elevated costs. But even this adjustment misses the mark. According to the latest data, the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in urban Honolulu exceeds $2,200 per month, or $26,400 annually, which is more than the entire federal poverty threshold for a family of three.
Researchers have long known that income-based poverty measures miss critical dimensions of hardship. People need more than a minimum income; they need affordable housing, access to nutritious food, health care, education, and reliable transportation. When families lack these basics simultaneously, the impact compounds in ways that a simple income threshold can't capture.
What's missing in Hawaiʻi
Consider food security, or rather, the lack of it. While official poverty statistics counted 10.1% of Hawaiʻi's population as poor in 2023, a comprehensive study by Hawaiʻi Foodbank found that 32% of households experienced food insecurity in 2024. That's nearly one in three families who are uncertain about where their next meal will come from.
The numbers are even starker in specific communities. On Hawaiʻi Island, 40% of households faced food insecurity. Among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander families, the rate exceeded 40%. Six percent of children went entire days without eating.
These aren't people captured by the poverty line. Many are working full-time. They're making choices between paying rent and buying groceries, between electricity and fresh vegetables. The official poverty rate doesn't ask these questions.
The housing story is similarly obscured. Official poverty measures acknowledge housing exists, but they don't measure whether families can actually afford it. Separate data from Aloha United Way paints a different picture: 44% of households are "ALICE"— Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. These families earn above the poverty line but can't afford basic necessities including housing, childcare, food, transportation and health care.
This isn't about living comfortably. The ALICE threshold represents a bare-minimum budget: the cheapest housing available, the least expensive childcare, minimal food costs, basic transportation and catastrophic-only health insurance. Nearly half of Hawaiʻi families can't meet even this survival budget, despite working.
Health care access reveals another dimension. While the official poverty rate doesn't measure health insurance coverage, American Community Survey data shows that in 2023, approximately 12% of Hawaiʻi's working-age population lacked health insurance. Those without coverage face impossible choices when illness strikes — forgo care and risk worsening conditions, or seek treatment and face bills that can push families into debt.
The challenge extends beyond insurance. The federal government has designated large swaths of rural Hawaiʻi as Medically Underserved Areas, including all of Kauaʻi, Molokaʻi, most of Hawaiʻi Island, and parts of Maui and Oʻahu. Families in these areas face long drives to reach basic medical care, a burden that compounds when transportation is already a struggle.
How hardships intersect
Understanding poverty requires seeing how these challenges interlock. A family paying 60% of income for rent has little left for food, leading to food insecurity. Food insecurity affects children's ability to concentrate in school, impacting educational outcomes. Poor educational outcomes limit future employment opportunities. Lack of reliable transportation makes it harder to access better-paying jobs, quality health care, or affordable grocery stores. Each deprivation reinforces the others.
This is what researchers call "multidimensional poverty": the experience of simultaneous deprivations across multiple areas of life. While national researchers have developed frameworks to measure this, Hawaiʻi lacks a comprehensive local measure that accounts for our unique circumstances.
Consider the case of Hawaiʻi's veterans, a population where we actually have good data tracking multiple dimensions. According to federal housing data, approximately 20,270 Hawaiʻi veterans, 36% of veteran homeowners, face housing affordability challenges, living in homes with quality problems, overcrowding, or severe cost burdens. Federal estimates suggest 283 veterans experience homelessness. These housing challenges often intersect with health care needs, employment barriers and food insecurity.
Yet Hawaiʻi has also shown what targeted, multidimensional intervention can achieve with this population. Between 2015 and 2022, the state reduced veteran homelessness by 51%, far exceeding the national average. This success came from programs that addressed not just housing but also health care, employment support and case management. It demonstrates both the importance of measuring multiple dimensions and the potential for coordinated solutions.
The full picture
When we look across multiple measures, a more complete picture emerges. The official poverty rate captures 10.1% of the population. But:
- 32% of households experience food insecurity
- 44% cannot afford basic necessities despite working (ALICE)
- 12% lack health insurance
- Significant populations live in areas with limited access to health care
- Housing costs consume more than half of many families' income
These aren't separate groups of people. There's substantial overlap. A single working mother might be above the poverty line (not counted as poor), but experience food insecurity (counted in the 32%), qualify as ALICE (counted in the 44%), live in a medically underserved area, and spend 65% of her income on rent. Each challenge makes the others harder to overcome.
The demographics reveal additional layers. Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander families experience food insecurity at rates exceeding 40%. Hawaiʻi Island shows both the highest food insecurity (40%) and significant challenges with health care access. Families with children face particularly acute pressures, with 34% of households with children reporting that one or more keiki is food insecure.
Why measurement matters
Why does measurement matter? Because how we count determines what we see, and what we see shapes how we respond.
When we measure only income-based poverty, we miss the working families who are one car repair away from crisis. We overlook the trade-offs families make between food and rent, between health care and electricity. We fail to see how geographic isolation compounds economic challenges in rural areas. We don't capture the full scope of need in our communities.
Better measurement doesn't automatically create solutions, but it enables smarter responses. The success in reducing veteran homelessness came from recognizing that housing alone wasn't enough. Veterans needed coordinated support across multiple dimensions. Food banks can target resources more effectively when they understand which communities face the highest rates of food insecurity. Policymakers can design programs that address the interactions between housing costs and food security rather than treating them as separate issues.
More comprehensive measurement also reveals what's working. If Hawaiʻi implements programs to reduce housing cost burdens, we can track whether food insecurity also decreases. When we improve transportation access, we can measure impacts on health care utilization and employment. Understanding how challenges intersect allows us to identify interventions that create positive ripple effects across multiple areas.
Moving toward understanding
Hawaiʻi faces unique economic challenges that national poverty measures weren't designed to capture. Our housing costs rank among the nation's highest. Our island geography creates barriers to accessing services that mainlanders take for granted. Our diverse population experiences hardship differently across communities. Our dependence on shipping makes us vulnerable to supply chain disruptions that affect food security.
Developing a more comprehensive understanding of economic hardship in Hawaiʻi would help us see these intersections clearly. Several states and regions have created multidimensional poverty measures tailored to their specific contexts. Hawaiʻi could do the same, incorporating our existing data on food security, housing affordability, health care access, and geographic challenges into a framework that shows how these factors combine.
The goal isn't to prove that more people are struggling, though the data suggests current measures significantly undercount hardship. Rather, it's to understand the nature of that struggle more completely. Only by seeing the full picture can communities, organizations and policymakers develop responses that address the actual challenges Hawaiʻi families face, not just the ones that fit neatly into a single income threshold created more than 60 years ago.
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Reprinted with permission from Corey Idleburg, executive director of The Learning Observatory, a Hawaiʻi nonprofit focused on research translation and public learning. Learn more at tlohi.org.
