The methods used to determine whether a child qualifies for coverage, based on his or her family income, vary from state to state. Under longstanding federal law, states must follow certain rules in determining income-eligibility, but they also have considerable flexibility regarding whether they will count or exempt certain types or amounts of income and whether they allow deductions for certain types or amounts of expenses. Typically, states “disregard” — that is, they do not count — a portion of earnings from a working family’s income to reflect that these resources are needed to cover work-related expenses and generally are not available to cover other costs, such as the cost of purchasing health coverage. Estimates presented here reflect net income, taking into account each state's income disregard policy, since this is how states provide income information to CMS and is the basis on which enrollees’ eligibility is determined.

The CHIP statute defines low-income children as those at or below 200% of poverty. States use two different types of income disregards in determining eligibility for CHIP which in turn affects the income levels reported CMS. The first type of disregard is the exclusion of particular dollar amounts or types of income, and the second occurs when a state excludes an entire block of percent-of-poverty income. For more information, see Sources.

Peterson, Chris, Domestic Social Policy Division, Congressional Research Service (CRS), January 27, 2009 memorandum based on analysis of data from the SCHIP Statistical Enrollment Data System (SEDS) provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

NA: Children in families with incomes above 200% poverty level were not eligible for the state's CHIP program as of FY2008.

Federal Poverty Level (FPL) was established to help government agencies determine eligibility levels for public assistance programs such as Medicaid. FPL is represented in this resource as poverty guidelines as opposed to the slightly different poverty thresholds.

Federal Fiscal Year (FY): Unless otherwise noted, years proceeded by "FY" on statehealthfacts.org refer to the Federal Fiscal Year, which runs from October 1 through September 30. For example, FY 2009 refers to the period from October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009.