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CIAO DATE: 12/5/2006
Why Poverty Doesn't Rate
Nicholas Eberstadt
September 2006
Abstract
Without a clearer understanding of the serious flaws in the government's official measure of poverty, most initiatives aimed at reducing poverty in the United States will be needlessly ineffective. New measures that take into account contemporary lifestyles and the dynamic U.S. economy will be more useful in helping the poor.
The Census Bureau last week released its latest estimate of the U.S. poverty rate--the country's most important official statistic on domestic want and deprivation. The figure was sobering, signaling short-run stagnation and deterioration over the past generation. The 2005 poverty rate of 12.6 percent barely budged from the previous year's number and was substantially higher than the 11.1 percent level registered back in 1973, the lowest on record. No less disturbing, the official measure indicates that a greater portion of families and children live in poverty in America today than three decades ago.