The need for a new tool to measure poverty

In 1964 government economist Mollie Orshansky, established the federal poverty guidelines by simply evaluating the cost of feeding a family.  The measure, adopted by the federal government, ignored other indicators such as housing, transportation, utilities, health care, child care and other critical markers.  And although the poverty line is adjusted each year to account for inflation, the index that measures poverty has never been changed. Nor does it consider differences in geography. Therefore, the same criteria that measure poverty in Beverly Hills, Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and Chicago’s Gold Coast uses the exact same numbers to measure poverty in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood, the Mississippi Delta or Appalachia.

Why is the index used to measure poverty so important? As the Stanford Social Innovation Review notes, “The federal poverty line is used to determine eligibility and appropriations for all types of federal, state, and local aid, including SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid. How the line is determined has real material implications for low-income families. The poverty line is also the most important way that America measures how well it is treating its most disadvantaged members.”

To further demonstrate the erroneous nature of the poverty guidelines, the Oregon Center for Public Policy developed the Oregon Basic Family Budget Calculator in 2013. This tool illustrates the income required for a “basic level of economic security” and takes into account not only the regional differences of the Pacific Northwest, but also geographic differences in Oregon. In Oregon’s two largest cities, Portland and Eugene, a family of three requires incomes of $62,169 and $60,312 respectively to achieve economic security. This is more than three times the income of a three-member household hovering around the federal poverty guideline.

If this is accurate, then the 40 million or so Americans officially classified as poor today, is not representative of the truth and there are likely as many as 120 and 130 million Americans that realistically be classified as poor or economically insecure.That is roughly 40 percent of the entire American population. This also means that as many as two-thirds of those truly in need of services are being neglected.

Tony Kiene is the Executive Writer at Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties His 22 years of nonprofit and entertainment experience includes service to The Minneapolis Urban League, Penumbra Theatre Company, Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, the Black United Fund of Oregon, and Pepé Music, Inc. Additional experience includes work as a Graduate Research Intern / Archivist at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Graduate Teaching Fellow at the University of Oregon, and Public Relations Associate at the Purdue Black Cultural Center. He holds a B.A. in sociology and African American Studies from Purdue University as well as an M.A. in American Studies from Purdue where his Master’s Essay was titled, Uptown: The Racial, Spiritual, and Political Sociology of The Minneapolis Sound. Some of Tony’s other work has been published in Nommo: The Power of the Word, Community Times, Black Theatre Network, Insight News, Black Classic Press, Collegiate Press, and Reo Deo.