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The Human Needs Index (HNI) is believed to be the first multidimensional measure of poverty in the United States from the nonprofit perspective. The high-quality, monthly data from The Salvation Army goes back to 2004 and illuminates trends in poverty and vulnerability.

The HNI offers a critical new tool for policy makers, social services providers, and researchers to more quickly and accurately understand trends in need. It can help better understand what is likely to happen and at what time, with data that could also suggest patterns of vulnerability in the economic climate or to unanticipated disasters — information that is critical in creating targeted efforts to alleviate poverty.

The Salvation Army operates more than 7,500 centers in communities across the U.S. and collects high-quality data on a wide variety of poverty-related social services it provides. It is unique in its geographic reach and comprehensive coverage of basic human needs. The data collected afford a unique opportunity to address the call for increasingly more accessible and more rigorous data from nonprofit organizations to better illuminate trends in poverty over time.

Each Salvation Army center across the U.S. collects data related to the services it provides within that community. In creating the HNI, Lilly School researchers spent more than a year reviewing 230 kinds of data from The Salvation Army and ultimately selected the variables that were most representative of the basic needs people have for survival (related to food, shelter, clothing), and were validated against established governmental measures like the poverty and unemployment rates, and SNAP benefits.

The HNI is a measurement of need based on the services provided by local branches of The Salvation Army. The greatest level of geographical detail the HNI can reliably measure is at the state level. While the HNI will be reflective of a general need in your area, there may be specifics within your community that cause it to diverge from the overall level of need of your state.

The final model includes six line-item variables representing essential aspects of human need:

The scale begins at 0 — indicating a minimum level of need. When comparing state values, they can be compared either across states or across time. If Illinois has a need of 2 in May but a need of 3 in September, that is a clear increase in need. Likewise, if Illinois has a need of 2 while Nebraska has a need of 1, Illinois has the higher need at that moment.

The HNI is a unique measure of poverty. "Best" depends on context — if you are writing about the job market, the unemployment rate is more directly relevant. What the HNI delivers is a timely measurement based on goods and services provided to individuals and communities in need — not volatile to arbitrary cut-offs or delayed by two-year reporting lags. Each month's value is a composite of thousands of services individually recorded.

The answer may surprise you. Read this report by the U.S. Census Bureau to learn more.

Yes. The HNI is calculated using variables adjusted on a per-capita basis, so that states can be compared with each other regardless of their populations.

Yes. The same measures were used for all years included in the HNI. Adjusting on a per-capita basis also allows for population growth to be accounted for within the HNI.

The national HNI and state HNIs were calculated separately and are scaled independently. While the raw values cannot be directly compared, the direction and magnitude of the trend lines are comparable. The Y axis on the left of the timeline refers to the national scale; the Y axis on the right refers to the state scale.

The HNI will be updated quarterly with the most recently available monthly data from The Salvation Army.

Please use the following citation:

The Human Needs Index, researched and prepared by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy using data from The Salvation Army. Available online at www.HumanNeedsIndex.org.