Given the current emphasis in national policy on self-reliance and a smaller role for government, the official poverty measure, which is based on the premise that all families should have sufficient income from either their own efforts or government support to boost them above a...

The official U.S. poverty measure defines the poor in terms of a family's actual, yearly cash income relative to an estimate of the income needed to sustain a minimally acceptable standard of living. An alternative definition, designed to reflect a family's ability to achieve economic...

In this paper we study changes in the prevalence and composition of poverty in the United States over the 1973-1988 period, focusing on the first and last years. Over this period, official poverty rose from 23.6 million people (11.4 percent of the population) to 31.9 million (13.1 percent),...