Philadelphia Inquirer, January 14, 2008: Editorial: A New Yardstick
What thriving city would look for ways to swell its ranks of people living in poverty?
That’s a risk inherent in a new initiative by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that could increase the number of “poor” people in his city. It’s a risk that Mayor Nutter’s administration would do well to monitor.
Bloomberg isn’t suggesting that more of the world’s huddled masses pick up and move to the Big Apple. Rather, the high-profile mayor is seeking to reopen the decades-old debate about where the federal government should draw the poverty line.
In a view shared by many policymakers, Bloomberg doesn’t trust the 1960s-era formula that, in a general sense, sets the poverty line – currently, $20,650 for a family of four – by tripling a household’s annual food bill.
For years, the trouble with that calculation has been that Americans were spending a smaller share of their income on food. What’s more, the formula did not take into account other costly necessities such as housing costs, child care, health insurance and the like. At the same time, the feds’ poverty measure downplayed the potential value of government aid such as food stamps or rent vouchers.
By tinkering with the formula, of course, the number of families ranked as poor could grow – or shrink. That’s one hot political potato.
If more New Yorkers qualify as poor, it could mean the shift of millions and millions of dollars in antipoverty assistance. Or the opposite could happen, thus denying the city buckets of aid.
Little wonder that the last serious effort to update the poverty formula took place a dozen years ago – and went nowhere.
In 1995, National Academy of Sciences experts made common-sense recommendations to Congress to update the nation’s poverty yardstick.
The political debate stalemated, though, with Republicans and Democrats at odds over upsetting the status quo.
That inside-the-Beltway political dynamic may not have changed much, but it’s hard to argue with Bloomberg’s attempt to craft a poverty measure that’s modern, holistic and realistic.
For his part, the New York mayor – a numbers guy, if ever – says he just wants a better yardstick to assess the impact of the city’s antipoverty programs. That would make sense not only for Broadway but for Broad Street, too, given Nutter’s need to maximize scarce city resources.
So Bloomberg has started an important conversation, one that other cities and state capitals should join.
Of course, wherever the poverty line is set, government’s goal should be to move many more people above it.