rates of food insecurity, the number of people who 
are asset poor (with less than three months of in-
come saved), the number of disconnected youth, teen 
birth rates, participation rates in Federal anti-pov-
erty programs for all eligible populations, and the 
number of people who are unbanked. 
(9) REGIONAL
COSTS
OF
LIVING.—The term 
‘‘regional costs of living’’ means a measure of the 
differing costs of maintaining a given living standard 
in varying regional, geographic, urban or rural re-
gions. 
(10) ECONOMIC INSECURITY.—The term ‘‘eco-
nomic insecurity’’ means the inability of individuals 
and households to cope with routine adverse or cost-
ly life events and the lack of means to maintain a 
decent standard of living and to recover from the 
costly consequences of those events. 
(11) ECONOMIC
STABILITY.—The term ‘‘eco-
nomic stability’’ means individuals and households 
have access to the means and support systems nec-
essary to effectively cope with adverse or costly life 
events and have the ability to effectively recover 
from the consequences of those events while main-
taining their standard of living or maintaining a de-
cent standard of living. 
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(12) DIGITAL DIVIDE.—The term ‘‘digital di-
vide’’ means the gap between individuals, house-
holds, businesses and geographic areas at different 
socio-economic levels with regard to both their access 
information and communications technologies and 
including the imbalance both in physical access to 
technology and the resources, education and skills 
needed to effectively use computer technology and 
the Internet for a wide variety of activities. 
(13) OUTCOMES.—The term ‘‘outcomes’’ means 
change in the economic status, economic instability 
or economic security of an individual, household or 
other population which is attributable to a planned 
intervention, benefit, or service or series of interven-
tions, benefits, and services, regardless of whether 
such an intervention was intended to change such 
economic status. 
(14) DISPARATE IMPACT.—The term ‘‘disparate 
impact’’ refers to the historic and ongoing impacts 
of the pattern and practice of discrimination in em-
ployment, education, housing, banking and nearly 
every other aspect of American life in the economy, 
society or culture that have an adverse impact on 
minorities, women, or other protected groups, re-
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gardless of whether such practices were motivated by 
discriminatory intent. 
SEC. 4. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FEDERAL INTERAGENCY 
WORKING GROUP ON REDUCING POVERTY. 
(a) ESTABLISHMENT
OF FEDERAL INTERAGENCY 
WORKING GROUP ON REDUCING POVERTY.—There is es-
tablished within the Department of Health and Human 
Services, a Federal Interagency Working Group on Reduc-
ing Poverty, which shall be chaired by the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services, and whose members shall be 
selected by their respective agency heads from the senior 
ranks of their agencies, which shall— 
(1) develop, within 180 days of enactment, a 
National Strategy to reduce the number of persons 
living in poverty in America in half within 10 years 
of the release of the 2014 Census report on Census 
Report on Income and Poverty in the United States: 
2013, that includes goals and objectives relating 
to— 
(A) reducing in half the number of Ameri-
cans living in poverty as reported by the 2014 
Census report on Income and Poverty in the 
United States: 2013; 
(B) eliminating child poverty in America; 
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(C) eliminating extreme poverty in Amer-
ica; 
(D) improving the effectiveness and out-
comes of poverty related programs by improving 
our understanding of the root causes of poverty, 
the social, economic, and the cultural contribu-
tors to persistent intergenerational poverty; 
(E) improving the measure of poverty to 
include more indicators and measures that can 
meaningfully account for other aspects relating 
to the measure of poverty, such as regional dif-
ferences in costs of living, the impact of rising 
income inequality, the impact of the persistent 
‘‘digital divide’’, expanding the understanding 
of poverty by distinguishing a standard that 
measures a level of freedom from deprivation 
versus a standard that measures a standard of 
economic adequacy provided by a living wage 
and access to a decent living standard, and the 
impact of poverty on other measures of eco-
nomic stability and economic outcomes, such as 
educational attainment, rates of incarceration, 
lifetime earnings, access to health care, health 
care outcomes, access to housing, and including 
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other measures as necessary to improve our un-
derstanding of why poverty persists in America; 
(F) eliminating the disparate rates of pov-
erty based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, or 
sexual 
orientation 
and 
identity, 
especially 
among children in those households so im-
pacted; 
(G) measuring effectiveness of poverty re-
lated programs on the basis of long-term out-
comes, including the long-term savings and 
value of preventive practice and policy, and em-
ploying fact based measures of programs to 
make improvements; 
(H) improving the accessibility of benefit 
and social services programs, reducing the com-
plexity and difficulty of enrollment, and improv-
ing the rates of enrollment in need based pro-
grams for all eligible recipients to maximize the 
impact of benefits and social services programs 
on reducing the impacts of poverty and improv-
ing economic outcomes; 
(I) making more uniform eligibility re-
quirements to improve the coordination of serv-
ice delivery, reduce gaps in eligibility, and im-
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