The Poverty Line Was Designed Assuming Every Family Had a Housewife Who Was a 'Skillful Cook'

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-poverty-line-was-designed-assuming-every-family-had-a-housewife-who-was-a-skillful-cook/282931/



The official poverty line, as I wrote yesterday, is a dated and crude statistical concept that in many ways fails to capture America's historical success at fighting economic need. It was based on the cost of food in 1963, mostly because the Department of Agriculture had some idea of what a basic grocery budget should look like, whereas there wasn't any real agreement on what families needed to spend on other essentials. Since then, it's mostly just been adjusted for inflation.

Keep that history in mind while reading this passage, which I found in a 1992 report by the Social Security Administration on how the poverty threshold came to be:

When the hypothetical family cut back its food expenditures to the point where they equaled the cost of the economy food plan (or the low cost food plan) for a family of that size, the family would have reached the point at which its food expenditures were minimal but adequate, assuming that "the housewife will be a careful shopper, a skillful cook, and a good manager who will prepare all the family's meals at home.”

[LiberalEsto]

1. But if the "housewife" works 2, 3 jobs to pay the rent,

when does she have time to "prepare all the family's meals at home."

Frickin dummies at USDA, living in the imaginary 1950s.

[enlightenment]

6. This isn't something the USDA can change

on its own accord. It is a political football - and no President wants it to change on their watch. If they adjust it, it will most likely do one of two things (as opposed to staying the same): the poverty rate will rise or it will drop.

It could drop if they add calculation for the varieties of assistance available today or just use cost of food, which is, relatively, less than it was then.

It could rise if they calculate the actual cost of living, rather than just the cost of food.

If it drops, whoever is in charge will be accused of fudging the numbers; if it rises, they will be accused of driving the economy into the ground. It will take someone who is more concerned with people than their legacy before it is changed.

[dsc]

2. In fairness the price of food relative to other things has fallen a great deal since the 60's

so while the poverty line has many problems, as any 50 year old statistical measure would, that isn't one of them. For today I think poverty level should be based far more on cost of housing and medical care than food.

[XemaSab]

3. Scratch cooking with cheap ingredients is time consuming

Ever make chili from dry beans?

Ain't nobody got time for that.

[xchrom]

5. GRRRRL!11 YOU PUT BEANS IN YOUR CHLI?

that ain't right...

[XemaSab]

7. .

[DetlefK]

8. Dry beans is an especially bad example.

1. Beans are a cheap source of protein since about 2000 years and on the continents Europe, Asia, India and South America.

2. Put dry beans in water the day before. (But use fresh water for cooking them.)


And relating price to time of cooking doesn't work. You can make fantastic, cheap-ass desserts in 30 minutes and a boring, expensive dish in 2 hours.

[Zorra]

9. +1

[kestrel91316]

12. That's complete BS. The night before you make chili, you bring those dry beans to a boil for

1 minute, then turn the heat off. Within 1 hour they are just like you soaked them overnight. Then you drain, add fresh water, and simmer for an hour before going to bed. Chill the pan in cold water in the sink before putting the cooked beans in the fridge.

When you get home from work the next day those beans are just as nice to use as canned.

[XemaSab]

13. Actually cooking the beans takes hours

and you have to stir them frequently.

I have learned this the hard way.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Similarly, built-in at-home free child care.

Housekeeping and gardener, too.

[Cleita]

10. Back in 1963, most poor people did have a home even

if in a run down tenement or rural shack. What do homeless people do today especially if they don't have any skill in cooking?

[laundry_queen]

11. Yes, and a garden.

Some even had a few chickens.

My grandparents were super poor farmers. But...they had a large, paid for house (passed down to them) and a few hundred acres of land, also paid for. They had a lot of resources...you could get a year's worth of berries from a week or 2 of picking...lots of wild animals to eat...room for cows and chickens and a giant garden...

My mom, aunts & uncles tell me they didn't have much, but they ate like kings. It helps that my grandmother got married 'late' in those days (the war was going on) and so took a bunch of home economics courses. She could knit anything, sew anything, repair anything, grow anything, preserve anything and cook anything. No one went without.

How many people have those kinds of skills now? How many poor people have a house that's paid for? Or free land that's large enough for a garden? Or tons of free time to pick berries or raise livestock?

You can't even compare the poor from 50 years ago to now.

[Gormy Cuss]

14. The poverty line was 3 x the cost of an economical food budget.

Mollie Orshansky, the economist who developed this measure, based it on the available data at the time. That means that her 1960s data showed food as 1/3 of basic needs expenditures, something that hasn't been true in decades. For one thing, our food costs as a proportion of basic needs expenditures have gone down as costs for housing have demanded more resources.

Another problem with the poverty line measure from day one is it fails to consider regional differences in costs and proportional cost of basic needs.

These and other inadequacies of the poverty line measure were topic for discussion when I started in public policy research decades ago. That we're still using Orshansky's measure is shameful.

[woo me with science]

15. K&R

[bettyellen]

16. cook and full time day care/ housekeeper. devaluing "women's work" has come back to bite us all in

in the ass.

[Agschmid]

19. Your source is...

payday lender SPAM just FYI: