New Poverty Measure Report : Percentage Of Poor Americans Higher Than Official Numbers

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/12305

By Doug Cunningham

More Americans are living in poverty than the official stats indicate, according to a new report from the Center for Law And Social Policy. The report is based on the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) calculations of each state’s poverty rate using a Census web tool. It’s an updated measure to try and gauge the true percentage of Americans living in poverty. Dorothy Smith wrote the report.

: “The current measure is outdated and inadequate in its ability to capture what’s going on with modern families today. It’s basis is on a subsistence food budget from survey data that came out n the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. And it’s only been updated for inflation and so we are saying that there’s other things that a poverty measure needs to capture that are relevant to the modern family.”

Using this new measurement, the national poverty rate climbs from 12.5 to 14.1 percent.

(Full report available at: http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publications/files/measurebymeasure.pdf)

[PDJane]

1. Does this actually surprise anyone?