The necessary and sufficient condition is
where is the spectral radius of the nonnegative matrix. No irreducibility is required. We use the given nonnegative-vector characterization of its Perron eigenvalue.
For necessity, suppose is the survival fixed point and let . Since for every , its equation gives for every . There are finitely many such coordinates, so
Outside the inequality still holds, because its right side is zero and its left side is nonnegative. The provided Perron–Frobenius theorem characterization therefore gives . In particular survival is impossible at for this Poisson offspring law.
Conversely suppose . The given characterization supplies a nonzero with ; normalize it so . For sufficiently small ,
For example any works. Coordinates with satisfy the inequality automatically. Starting at , iterate . Monotonicity makes the sequence increase, and takes nonnegative vectors into , so it converges to a fixed point . Part (a) gives , proving survival from at least one type. This proves the spectral survival criterion for multitype Poisson branching for reducible as well as irreducible reproduction matrices.