Talk:Poverty line in the United States

Discussion

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1. This article is not neutral and offensively biased.
2. Americano-centric article: there are other definitions
3. Isn't this more commonly known as the poverty line?

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Please forgive my earlier POV editorializing, but I'm trying to figure out one thing -- and I'm not sure it's something I can merely assert as "true" or not.

It seems that the definition of "poverty level" depends solely on income: wages, profits, money you got from family and friends, etc.

If your income from these non-govermental sources is belown the "poverty level" or "poverty threshold", than you are entitled to various welfare benefits.

My question is, after receiving welfare benefits, are you still poor? I mean, has anybody done any studies on the cash value of welfare? Like, if I get $700/month for rent assistance and food stamps, that is worth $8,400 a year. Add that to part-time my McDonald's job ($5,000 a year), and now my total income would seem to be $13,400, which is above the poverty level.

May I still fairly said to be "living in poverty", when the total of my wages and welfare benefits is above the poverty line?

Ed, ignoring for a moment the rest of your text, your understanding of what the poverty line reflects is incorrect. Quoting from Gordon Fisher's paper on the history of the poverty line,

Orshansky presented the poverty thresholds as a measure of income inadequacy, not of income adequacy - "if it is not possible to state unequivocally 'how much is enough,' it should be possible to assert with confidence how much, on an average, is too little."

That is to say, the poverty line does not say: "If you have this much income, you should be okay." It says, "if you have less than this much income, we can say for pretty darn sure you don't have enough to get by."

DanKeshet

I'm still wondering about the phrases "living in poverty" and "live below the poverty line". If a family has 3 times as much cash income as it needs to feed itself, and STILL gets government assistance, then WHO SAYS they are "in poverty"? I daresay tens of millions of people would risk their lives to come to America and live in "poverty" like that! --Uncle Ed 13:46, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Your correction is wrong, though. Only noncash benefits aren't counted toward the poverty line; cash benefits are counted in the statistics. Also, yes, the poverty lines are defined differently in different countries, so I would imagine there are people from other countries who would risk their lives to come here for that. DanKeshet 15:08, Aug 21, 2003 (UTC)

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Just how many dollars per person per year is the poverty line in the US? -- Miguel

The thresholds can be found here. They are seperated into categories by family size, number of related children, and for small households, whether or not the household contains people over 65. DanKeshet 14:45, Aug 21, 2003 (UTC)

Orshansky definition

These 2 sentences don't make sense:

Orshansky's definition calculated the minimum amount of income a family unit would need to purchase food for all family members to eat the cheapest nutritionally acceptable diet described by the United States Department of Agriculture. She then multiplied that number by three, the average percentage that U.S. families spent on food.

How can "three" be the average percentage that U.S. families spent on food? And why multiply by it, anyway?

Maybe the previous writer meant that in the 1950s US families spent one-third of their budget on food.

By the way, US families now spend around one-tenth their budget on food.

I'd like to see the calculations clarified. What is the dollar amount for "the cheapest nutritionally acceptable diet described by the United States Department of Agriculture"? --Uncle Ed 14:58, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

You are right: the average family spent 1/3 of their income on food, which is why she multiplied by three. As a further clarification, however, I'd like to know if current poverty line is recalculated using Orshansky's method (in which case we'd be multiplying by 10 now, since the average family spends 1/10 on food), or if it is recalculated by simply taking her measured number and indexing to inflation. Scott Ritchie 11:26, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

NEED ARGUMENT THAT POVERTY LINE UNDERSTATES POVERTY

the article notes correctly that some say the poverty line overstates poverty and some say it understates. but it then fails entirely to represent the arguments of those who say the line underestimates poverty. it needs to give these arguments equal weight before it can be considered complete and fair.

Proposed merge

It is proposed that this article be merged with Poverty in the United States. The two articles cover exactly the same subject matter. The only differences are: 1) The "Poverty in the United States" article covers the topic much more comprehensively, and 2) the Poverty line in the United States article has a section entitled "Controversy." This section could easily be merged into "Poverty in the United States," along with any other cited material that is not already in the latter article. Comments? Sunray 17:27, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Merged. Sunray 00:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)