On Feb 25, 2007, at 9:53 AM, B. wrote:
> "These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the
> nation's 37
> million poor people into deep poverty -- the highest rate since at
> least 1975. The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed
> slowly but steadily over the last three decades," the report said.
This is slightly deceptive. The stats on extreme poverty from the Census Bureau only begin in 1975. And yes, in 2005, 42.9% of the official poverty population had incomes under 50% of the poverty line, the highest on record. But the share of the total population in extreme poverty (i.e., under 50% of poverty) was 5.4%, which isn't the highest on record. It was 5.9% in 1983, and 6.2% in 1993. The overall poverty rate was 15.2% in 1983, and 14.8% in 1993 - compared with 12.6% last year. So the poverty rate isn't as high as it's been in the past.
But...the U.S. poverty line is an absolute concept - it was set in the early 1960s and has been adjusted only for inflation ever since. So in principle, a poverty-line income today represents the same purchasing power as it did 40 years ago, with no consideration of rising average incomes or changing "needs." Most poverty researchers tend to define the poverty line as 50% of the median household's (with appropriate adjustments for household size, which sounds easier than it is). A guy at the Census Bureau, Jack O'Neil, used to do unpublished estimates of the relative poverty rate for the U.S. every year, but he retired. In general, it was about 1.5-1.8 times the official rate, which would put it between 20% and 25% now.
Doug