How is New Poverty like New Coke? Richard Bavier, a respected policy analyst with the OMB for many years, reams the Obama administration’s new bait-and-switch poverty line. … Bavier argues the new line is “carefully designed so that the public will think it is one thing when it is really something else.”
Specifically, he notes, the New Poverty Line line isn’t really a measure of what people “need.” For one thing, it starts its calculations at “the 30th to 35th percentiles of spending on food, clothing and shelter by two-adult, two-child families,” who are among the most prosperous families, compared with say, one parent, two child families–indeed, even at the 33d percentile their income is apparently above the median income for all families of all types. (There seems to be some complicated fiddling with this measure to bring it a little more back in line with reality, which only adds to the New Poverty Line’s incomprehensibility.) …
The New Poverty line is (most importantly, to my mind) not an absolute measure like the familiar Old Poverty Line. It is a moving goal post that rises as others in society get richer–a measure of inequality, in this sense, not poverty. …
One day you wash up on the beach, wet and naked. Another day you wash back out. In between, the scenery changes constantly.
I can't figure it out: Does the new poverty line increase or decrease the number of people who are considered to be living in poverty?
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