How likely are you to suffer from poverty? This calculator determines an individual’s risk of financial ruin
For anyone worried about their future finances, two experts have found a way for individuals to calculate their risk of financial ruin based on four demographic factors.
The calculator looks at age, education, marital status and race to determine the average American's risk of falling into poverty over the next five, 10 or 15 years.
Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University, and Thomas Hirschl also a professor at Cornell University crunched hundreds of thousands of case records taken from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, an ongoing longitudinal study of Americans begun in 1968.
They set the poverty line for a family of four in 2015 at around $24,000 ($16,800).
"The calculator is a new way for Americans to look into the future and estimate their overall economic risk," Rank told the Washington University website.
"It simply has not been done before. In addition, people can see exactly how much inequality there is in America by comparing their profile with others."