[Tallguy]

To see why it's so misleading, we analyzed how relative poverty rates compare with absolute poverty rates for each of the American states. For relative poverty, we calculated the proportion of people living in households that earn less than half of their own state’s median income. For absolute poverty, we looked at the percentage of all people in a state living in households below the federal poverty line."

This is easy. It takes 2 incomes to raise kids today -- that's baked into the government assumptions. The largest slice of single-parent households are almost automatically making below the median rate. There's your "relative poverty" right there in a nutshell.

But the goverment doesn't want to address economic & tax policies that have created the requirments for a 2-income household.

[RipSawyer]

“But the goverment doesn’t want to address economic & tax policies that have created the requirments for a 2-income household.”

True and at the same time we have the claims made that somehow we are a much wealthier nation than in the days when a working class man could earn enough income for his wife to stay home and raise the children without having to have a job outside the home. We should be far wealthier but most of the wealth is squandered by government.