"Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue; it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright." -B. Franklin

Putting a Number on Poverty

Last month the U.S. Census Bureau released new data on poverty. The number of people living in poverty has risen a full percentage point over last year. Today, 13.2 percent of people in the country are living below the poverty line - about 40 million in all. This is a big problem, but it is not the whole story.

The way the U.S. government measures poverty is extremely flawed. Official poverty estimates do not take into account factors like rising medical care, transportation, child care, as well as cost of living as it varies by geographic location and therefore are not accurately factored in to calculations.

This raises the question: how then is poverty defined? Since the 1960s the government has marked poverty in absolute terms, independent of outside factors and events. The U.S. Census Bureau says that individual or families below the “absolute poverty line” are considered to have insufficient resources to meet basic needs for healthy living. Absolute poverty line threshold vary depending on collective income and number of family members, but generally if a family’s total income is less than its calculated “threshold,” they are considered poor. In 2008, the poverty line for a family of four was $21,834, according to the census; for a family of two adults and one child, it was $17,330.

Our outdated poverty measure not only fails to take into consideration significant factors like cost of living, but it also fails to capture millions of Americans who are in need of aid but not officially classified as being impoverished. It is pretty clear that the federal government is not doing a good job of addressing the root causes of poverty in America. Perhaps it is because they are wasting precious resources on analyzing data that is not accurate.

However, there is some good news in all of this talk about the way the federal government measures poverty. Congress has a bill pending that would provide more realistic standards. The Measuring American Poverty Act was introduced in the Senate in September by Sen. Chris Dodd,: a house version was introduced by Rep. Jim McDermott.

(This article was submitted by Br. John Gill, ofm)