How We Measure Poverty Matters — And We Can Do Better

“How many people are living in poverty in America? It depends on whom you ask. If it’s the US Census, the answer would be somewhere around 37 million people. But that number doesn’t necessarily capture everyone who might be considered poor, because measuring poverty largely depends on how we define it. And some definitions, including the one used to determine the federal poverty line, can be surprisingly arbitrary.
That’s a problem, because understanding how we measure poverty is critically important — not just because it gives us a sense of how deep the problem is in American society, but also because it allows us to better evaluate anti-poverty programs.”
Read more at Vox.