> “The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation.”
> If you keep Orshansky’s logic—if you maintain her principle that poverty could be defined by the inverse of food’s budget share—but update the food share to reflect today’s reality, the multiplier is no longer three.
> It becomes sixteen.
I'm not sure how accurate the methodology is to come up with the specific budget that produces the number "sixteen" here, but broadly speaking, it seems extremely likely that the number is no longer "three", and thus the conclusion that the "poverty line" is broken seems quite likely.
The share of goods in people expenses is something governments have been tracking extremely well since the end of the inter-wars period (losing some quality during WWII).
As far as economical measurements go, those are among the best you'll get on the real economy (monetary measurements tend to be more precise).
Yes, childcare is problematically expensive. But one of the core numbers in the article appears to be misleading at best.
> To function in 1955 society—to have a job, call a doctor, and be a citizen—you needed a telephone line. That “Participation Ticket” cost $5 a month. / Adjusted for standard inflation, that $5 should be $58 today. / But you cannot run a household in 2024 on a $58 landline. To function today—to factor authenticate your bank account, to answer work emails, to check your child’s school portal (which is now digital-only)—you need a smartphone plan and home broadband. / The cost of that “Participation Ticket” for a family of four is not $58. It’s $200 a month.
We're talking about needs here, yes? If your kids are young enough to need childcare (a recurring theme of the article), they don't need their own phones, so we're talking about two adults.
You can easily get an MVNO plan for $20 a month with 10GB data, which is more than enough for needs. Tether to it if you absolutely must access something on a device other than a phone. Get two of them, one for each of the adults in the family.
There's $40, not $58 and definitely not $200.
It just made me wonder if it's this easy to save 80% on the author's expected cost in this category, why should I trust that the other "national averages" the author uses should be considered as the factors in how families struggling financially could meet their needs?
It reminds me of when people use the "average SNAP benefit" as an indication that people on SNAP are going hungry. It's called "supplemental" for a reason: people are expected to spend some of their other money on food--and people receiving the average SNAP benefit as opposed to the maximum SNAP benefit have been through an assessment that determined they should have other money available to spend on food.
I don't doubt the poverty line should be higher than it is, but jumping from 3x to 16x a minimum food budget is much too far a jump.
If the core point about the poverty line being based on inflation adjusted food prices alone is correct, then the piece holds up very well and explains a hell of a lot about how life feels in the US right now.
[edit] if the “the line you see on charts is still just 3x food costs” thing isn’t actually true, through, then the article gets a lot weaker in a hurry.
Honestly hard to disagree with what the message is but I can’t really take him intellectually seriously even with an obvious premise with such lazy writing
> I came across a sentence buried in a research paper: “The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation.”
I think this is quoting https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/research-matters/2025/..., where the real quote is "The poverty threshold was originally defined as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963 and is annually adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U)." This isn't buried in a research paper, you paraphrased and then claimed it was a real quote by putting in within quotes, and you failed to cite a source. This is deliberately lying to your readers about the core premise of the whole piece.
The next sentence:
> I read it again. Three times the minimum food budget.
That isn't even what your fake quote said.
> In her January 1965 article,
What article? You haven't mentioned this yet, and you still haven't cited a single source.
> ”if it is not possible to state unequivocally ‘how much is enough,’ it should be possible to assert with confidence how much, on average, is too little.”
This is minor, but again this is an inaccurate quote. The original (https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v28n1/v28n1p3.pdf) says "on an average", not "on average". Two out of two uncited quotes are wrong so far, making the whole piece untrustworthy if it wasn't already.
> “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” — Plutarch
I assumed this one was real but I searched anyway because of the pattern of fake quotes. The first result is an article titled "Fake Plutarch Quotes Are the Newest and Most Facile Ailment of All Arguments About Inequality". This is another fake quote, three for three now.
I'm not going to read the rest of this, even without the trustworthiness issues the bland AI filler is not worth spending any time on. Everyone, please do not do this. Whatever rough notes you were going to feed into the AI are much better, just publish that if you don't have the time or ability to make it "good writing", however you define that.
– https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2025/...
I’m not sure how to treat this, but if the official poverty measure is used for practical purposes and not the SPM, the core premise is still entirely valid. I have no idea if that’s the case, and why the “official” one is still measured at all.
(the most recent poverty report isn't currently downloadable due to the recent government shutdown)
Your question about why the official poverty measure is still used at all is a good one. I'd speculate that if the official poverty measure is tangled up with legislation, it may not be simple for government bureaus to update the measure and eliminate usage of the old measure without someone passing some new laws. If the poverty measure partly defines who does or doesn't receive certain benefits then changing it could be fairly political. If the supplemental poverty measure indicates that e.g. 12% not 10% of families fall below the poverty line, then that implies 20% more funding is necessary for some benefits.
> If you keep Orshansky’s logic—if you maintain her principle that poverty could be defined by the inverse of food’s budget share—but update the food share to reflect today’s reality, the multiplier is no longer three.
They don't do that, nobody does that.
I agree that the poverty line is too low, and I agree that the original idea was not supposed to mean "more than this is ok", but the argument still doesn't really make sense even if the conclusion is correct.
Where I live, really the line where life becomes a real struggle is about 80k I would say. Below that, you're putting off maintenance, not saving money, the car is accumulating wear that you can't fix, and a medical bill is fatal.
People living way below 80k can only be doing so with significant government assistance.
It makes the essay hard to take seriously.
Because if this is true, it's massive. And it explains so much - starting with why everyone feels the economy is broken.
(And Medicare, even without additional supplements would have significantly better health outcomes than 1960s)
And if you take the average social security benefit being $48k per household/year, subtract those 2 expenses, either the $31k poverty line is way off or social security is way off
- There's https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/about/h... which does say that the Official Poverty Measure is indeed based on food expenses multiplied by three.
- On the other hand, there's also https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/demo/pove... which says that there are now two measures: the Official Poverty Measure and the newer Supplemental Poverty Measure that's intended to address some of the problems of the former.
Mention of the Supplemental Poverty Measure doesn't seem to appear in the submitted post using a quick Ctrl-F. Draw your own conclusions.
Poverty doesn’t mean you can only afford bare minimum stuff and can’t take any vacations or buy luxuries. It means you are struggling.
People in poverty do not have childcare costs, or healthcare, or even housing and transportation (they could be homeless or live with relatives, and either take buses, walk, bike, or get some kind of free ride to work)
Food is truly the only thing people really need. For that, the original amount seems accurate.
Ridiculous to say $100k is the new poverty line. Get a grip.
But re the "people in poverty don't have" a few caveats, in comparison to the 60s, "public" transportation is generally of lower availability and higher priced, single earner households were the norm, and housing was cheaper (addressed).
And while <$100k is pointed to as the line of dimished marginal benefits, in the context of the US median household income being $66k is an indictment of a broken system.
He's not saying the average person who was homeless, or living with relatives in 1963 was spending roughly one-third of their income in groceries, it was explicitly families.
You've just No True Scotsmanned your way into redefining what is being discussed. Please read article and firmly secure yourself :)
I did not know that is how that is calculated. Sigh, that’s not a great way to do that.