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The US Poverty Line: A Time For Change

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Poverty Line In today’s society, most people understand that poverty exists. It is a major issue in the United States. How does one determine how who really lives in poverty? Some people consider poverty living from pay check to pay check while some only consider the most extreme cases poverty, for example the homeless living on the streets. However, there is a way that poverty is measured in the United States. This measurement tool is called the poverty line also known as the poverty threshold. According to, “The U.S. Poverty Line: A Time For Change” written by Donald E. Chamber “poverty threshold is a measure of the amount of money society believes is necessary for a person to live at minimum level of subsistence or at a level consistent …show more content…
Lyndon Johnson had visions of a great American society and one way he that tried to achieve this dream was a “war on poverty”. In order to achieve this “Great Society”, Lyndon Johnson recruited an economist named Mollie Oshansky. She had already calculated the poverty line, the base minimum income to “not be poor” (Kimmel and Aronson 198). Mollie Oshansky worked for the Social Security Administration and had already been working on projects that measured poverty according to the article “Mollie Orshansky: Author of the Poverty Thresholds” written by Gordon M. Fisher (15). Mollie Orshansky determined that poverty meant “insufficient income to provide the food, shelter, and clothing needed to preserve health” (Kimmel and Aronson 198). Orshansky determined that the minimal necessity of shelter and cloths was hard to measure, but that food was not. Therefore, she used a cost of providing food for a family as the sole factor to determine the numeric value necessary to preserve health. The Department of Agriculture had provided several different meal plan guidelines that met the least nutritional requirements. According to “Poverty Line Problems: The History of an Outdated Measurement” written by Matthew Green the department of agriculture these guidelines were called “The Economy Plan”. In order for Mollie to create the measurement, she used the meal plan that was the cheapest food cost as one third of the minimum income needed to provide for a family. This value then created the measurement she used for food, clothing and shelter because she tripled the food value. If your income is less than this amount, then you are below the poverty line (Kimmel and Aronson 198). The poverty line, that was created by Mollie Orshansky and used by the United States government,

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