StumbleUpon WebToolbar - It’s Time for a Better Poverty Measure

By Mark Greenberg
The federal poverty measure shapes our understanding of how many people are in poverty, who is in poverty, and how much poverty goes up or down when economic conditions and policies change. But the official measure is deeply flawed. The dollar figures used to determine if families are in poverty are low and in many ways arbitrary. The rules don’t consider some resources, such as tax credits and food stamps, and some key family expenses that determine a family’s available income. As a result, the poverty measure often doesn’t show the impacts of important policies that are intended to improve the economic well-being of families. It needs to be updated and improved.
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