Poverty

Poverty Poverty What exactly is poverty and who does it effect' Many people don’t fully understand what poverty is and don’t think it occurs in the United states. But the truth is that it does effect families and communities in the United States. In 2000, according to the official measure, over eleven percent of the total U.S. population lived in poverty (U.S. Bureau). So the U.S. citizens need to understand certain concepts of poverty including; how poverty is measured in the United States, who are poor in the United States, and what does the government do to help out families in poverty. Poverty in the United States is calculated by a poverty measure developed by Mollie Orshansky during the mid-1960’s. Orshansky was a social science research analyst at the Social Security Administration. She began publishing articles with poverty statistics for the United States using a poverty calculation that she had developed. Orshansky’s measure had two components, a set of income thresholds and a definition of family income to be compared with those thresholds. She developed her poverty threshold by taking the cost of a minimum diet for families of different sizes and multiplied the cost by three to allow for other expenses. Poor families were those whose poverty, income, percent, states, united, families, tax, social, rate, 2000, government, family, reduce, programs, poor, over, bureau, welfare, thresholds, security, rates, people, melvin, lowest, developed, boyes, blacks, rises, program, out, orshansky, negative, measure, lower, insurance, hispanics