The poverty of "the poverty rate" : measure and mismeasure of want in modern America / by Nicholas Eberstadt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eberstadt, Nick, 1955-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poverty--United States.

Poverty.

United States.

Poor--United States.

Poor.

Income distribution--United States.

Income distribution.

Physical Description:

xv, 175 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : AEI Press ; Blue Ridge Summit, PA : Distributed to the trade by National Book Network, [2008]

Summary:

Since its inception in 1965, America's offical poverty rate (OPR) has been the single most important statistic used by policymakers and concerned citizens to evaluate success or failure in nation's ongoing struggle against material need. But in a critical new examination of this widely followed measure, Nicholas Eberstadt charges that the OPR is, in reality, "a broken compass" - a flawed index generating increasingly misleading numbers about poverty in the United States.

The OPR was originally intended to measure an absolute level of poverty over time by comparing a family's reported pretax income against a corresponding poverty threshold. But for the past three decades, the OPR has reported trends that are jarringly inconsistent with other statistical indicators of material deprivation. What is the reason for this curious discrepancy? Eberstadt suggests that the OPR's most serious problem is its implicit assumption that poor families will spend no more than their reported annual incomes - in other words, that their income levels are an accurate proxy for their consumption levels. In the decades since the ORP was unveiled, the disparity between reported income and expenditures has progressively widened, making income an ever less reliable predictor of consumption patterns - and, consequently, living standards - for America's poorer families.

In The Poverty of "The Poverty Rate," Eberstadt contends that the defects of the current poverty rate are not only severe but irremediable. Income-based measures cannot offer a faithful portrait of consumption patterns of material well-being in the United States. Central though the OPR has become to antipoverty policy, this "untrustworthy yardstick" should be discarded and replaced by more accurate measures of material deprivation.

Contents:

What is the official poverty rate, and what does it actually measure?

Poverty trends in modern America, according to the official poverty rate

The official poverty rate versus other statistical indicators bearing on material deprivation in America

Systematic differences between income and expenditures among poorer households in modern America

Accounting for the widening reported gap between income and consumption for lower-income Americans

Trends in living standards for low-income Americans

Conclusion : wanted

new poverty measure(s) for modern America.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 127-165) and index.

ISBN:

9780844742465

0844742465

OCLC:

239235634