The U.S. measure of poverty is an important social indicator that affects not only public perceptions of well-being in America, but also public policies and programs. The current measure was ...

Michael W. Green, a Wall Street investor, created a buzz in late 2025 by arguing that the U.S. poverty line should be jacked up to US$140,000 for a family of four. Currently, a family of that size has ...

New metric to measure poverty Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released a long-promised alternative method for measuring who’s officially considered poor and who isn’t. The old approach, established 50 ...

On September 14th, the Census Bureau will report the official poverty rate for 2020. In a typical year the poverty rate receives widespread attention as a key indicator of well-being in the United ...

In this post I discuss the policy implications of declaring the Supplemental Poverty Measure the new official measure, an action that could be taken unilaterally by the Director of the Office of ...

Defining poverty is more than a “definitional trick” (“Will Biden Cross a Line on Poverty?” by Kevin Corinth, op-ed, May 23). Measuring economic poverty involves estimating a basic-needs budget or ...

This story is part of the Prospect’s series on how the next president can make progress without new legislation. Read all of our Day One Agenda articles here. It’s often cited that four out of ten ...

Wonder Land: Citing the president’s age lets Democrats off the hook for the political failure of his economic policies. Images: AP/AFP/EPA/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly The credibility of the ...

I’m no fan of the American Enterprise Institute, the D.C. policy shop that harbors Michael “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it ...

In the panel's primary focus on the measurement of poverty in the United States, we discuss the rationale for, and the measurement of, a concept of poverty based on the lack of family resources needed ...