[PEN-L:707] Re: RE: Re: redefining the poor out of existence; what are we doing here

[James Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 04:44 PM 10/27/98 -0500, you wrote:
>
> By the way, how is poverty defined in the U.S (in general terms).  It's
often
> useful to be able to compare our social programs to the U'S's e.g.
> healthcare.  It helps to deflate the Hollywood image.


>
> Back in the 1950s, Molly Orshansky and others figured out a standard diet
> that would define a poverty life-style for a household. Because the poor
> spent about 1/3 of their income on food at the time, the poverty cut-off in
> terms of income was defined as 3 times the amount of money needed to pay for
> that diet. Then that amount has been adjusted for changes in prices ever
> since, with any household earning less than this cut-off being seen as
> "poor." This is simple (ignoring adjustments for the size of households,
> etc.) but I think it captures the way the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
> measures the poverty cut-off.
>
> My friend Patricia Ruggles told me that the BLS was going to switch to a new
> method for defining poverty, but I haven't heard anything about this
actually
> happening.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html