According to American official
figures, 15 percent of Americans live in poverty. Others say that the actual
percentage is over double that. They say this because in the 1960’s the
government created a way to measure poverty by taking the number of people on a
very low-cost food plan and multiplying it by three, that was what would
account for what a family would need just to be at a poverty-level standard of
living. This measure has been used for about 50 years now. But now, in 2011 the
U.S. Census Bureau came up with a new measure called the supplemental poverty
measure. This new measure only measures about 16% of Americans in poverty,
which isn’t much different from the previous measure. They described poverty as
not being able to meet the costs of a person’s basic needs, such as food, shelter,
and medical care. If you actually tally these costs up and see what the person’s
income is, it says about one in three Americans are in poverty, according to Jeannette
Wicks-Lim, Assistant Research Professor.
Question: Do you
believe that these numbers are actually accurate?
Relevance
to economics: Involves money
Wicks-Lim,
Jeannette. "Actual US Poverty Twice Official Figure." The
Real News. N.p., 31 May
2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. <http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10244>.
3 comments:
yes, these numbers are close to correct.
Maybe, but there is no real way to know if they are correct if you don't check it yourself.
I believe they are close but are always going to miss people. I can be really hard to measure something such as this. I feel like poverty is higher than what they mark.
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