How Do We Measure Poverty?

            On Tuesday, September 17, 2013, the Census Bureau revealed that the poverty line has been stuck at 15% last year. Especially during the year before and some 2.5 percentage points higher than in 2007 before the housing market burst and sent the United States careened into recession. But critics have raised the question on how a measure based on how much people spent on food in the early 1960s has any relevance today? They are absolutely correct. But it is wrong to suggest that there are fewer poor Americans than the official count shows, or that poverty has improved much over time. By taking into account government programs as well as unavoidable expenses, such as child care, the poverty rate has actually been higher over the last three years than the official statistic suggests. But as the debate over the proper was to measure our deprivation brings up some important questions: What is poverty? What do we measure it for? Are we measuring the right thing?
            In the 1960s, when the government first came up with the concept, it decided you were poor when you had to spend more than a third of your cash income on what it considered the minimally acceptable diet. But this is hardly the way to do it. In Europe, for instance, few countries measure a poverty line in the American sense of the minimum income needed to avoid extreme hardship.
            This article was written on September 20, 2013 by Eduardo Porter. When I first read this article, I immediately thought of the first time we talked about the poverty line. And one of the questions that we discussed was, “How do you measure the poverty line?” It’s a tricky question to answer since there is no definite way to count every person in America. The census tries to do that, but there are so many illegal immigrants that don’t fill out the census.
            I have actually never seen the point in defining the poverty line. I’m sure there is a specific reason why, but I’ve never really seen the point. Anyway, there could be many ways to calculate how to define the poverty line but there will always be at least ten percent more people who aren’t accounted for because they keeping a low profile so they won’t get deported. But, using a formula introduced in the 60s won’t tell us much. It’s out dated, and pretty much useless because there are more people in the United States then there were back in 1960.