Poverty in the United States.

• Author: Adams, Tucker Hart
• Position: The ECONOMIST

TRYING TO DEFINE POVERTY IN THE U.S. is at least as complicated as defining unemployment. And the picture becomes even muddier when we try to make comparisons across countries.

In the U.S. there are two official measures of poverty the poverty thresholds and the poverty guidelines. They are prepared by different arms of the federal government and used for different purposes.

The poverty thresholds are the original version of the federal poverty measure. They were originally developed in 1963-1964 by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration, who took the dollar costs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's economy food plan for families of three or more persons and multiplied the costs by a factor of three.

Economy Food Plan PER CAPITA PER WEEK Milk, cheese, ice cream 4.1 quarts Meat, poultry, fish 1.6 pounds Eggs 5 Dry beans, peas, nuts 0.4 pounds Flour, cereal, baked goods 3.2 pounds Citrus fruits, tomatoes 1.7 pounds Dark green and deep yellow vegetables 0.7 pounds Potatoes 2.8 pounds Other vegetables and fruits 2.8 pounds Fats, oils 0.6 pounds Sugars, sweets 0.7 pounds They are updated each year by the Census Bureau based on the consumer pries index. The thresholds are used mainly for statistical purposes such as preparing estimates of the number of Americans in poverty each year.

According to Census Bureau, the nation's official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent (16.2 million people). up from 14.3 percent (43.6 million people) in 2009 the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. The poverty rate in 2010 was the highest since 1993 but was 7.3 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available. In 2010 the poverty threshold ranged from 110,458 for an individual 65 or older to over 348,000 for a family of nine.

The poverty guidelines are the other version of the federal poverty measure. They are issued each year in the Federal Register by the Department of Health and Human Services. The guidelines are a simplification of the poverty thresholds and are used for administrative purposes such as determining financial eligibility for certain federal programs. Unlike the...