The evidence is precisely opposite of what technogeep claims, there is no evidence of a manipulation of the definition or value of the poverty level at the arbitrary whim of bureaucrats in the manner Technogeeb suggests happened.
Sigh!
There, I'm over it now. Thanks for the link to the Census Bureau tables. I couldn't get onto the site last night/early morning. Servers were down or something.
| http://www.census.gov/population/www/cps/cpsdef.html Poverty definition. Following the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB's) Directive 14, the Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to detect who is poor. If a family's total income is less than that family's threshold, then that family, and every individual in it, is considered poor. The poverty thresholds do not vary geographically, but they are updated annually for inflation with the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). The official poverty definition counts money income before taxes and excludes capital gains and noncash benefits (such as public housing, medicaid, and food stamps). Poverty statistics are based on a definition developed by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration (SSA)in 19641 and revised in 1969 and 1981 by interagency committees. This definition was established as the official definition of poverty for statistical use in all Executive departments by the Bureau of the Budget (BoB) in 1969 (in Circular No. A-46); after BoB became The Office of Management and Budget, this was reconfirmed in Statistical Policy Directive No. 14. The original poverty definition provided a range of income cutoffs or thresholds adjusted by such factors as family size, sex of the family head, number of children under 18 years old, and farm-nonfarm residence. At the core of this definition of poverty was the economy food plan, the least costly of four nutritionally adequate food plans designed by the Department of Agriculture. It was determined from the Department of Agriculture's 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey that families of three or more people spent approximately one-third of their after-tax money income on food; accordingly, poverty thresholds for families of three or more people were set at three times the cost of the economy food plan. Different procedures were used to calculate poverty thresholds for two-person families and people living alone in order to compensate for the relatively larger fixed expenses of these smaller units. For two-person families, the cost of the economy food plan was multiplied by a factor of 3.7 (also derived from the 1955 survey). For unrelated individuals (one-person units), no multiplier was used; poverty thresholds were instead calculated as a fixed proportion of the corresponding thresholds for two-person units. Annual updates of these SSA poverty thresholds were based on price changes of the items in the economy food plan. As a result of deliberations of a Federal interagency committee in 1969, the following two modifications to the original SSA definition of poverty were adopted2:
In 1981, three additional modifications in the poverty definition recommended by another interagency committee were adopted for implementation in the March 1982 CPS as well as the 1980 census:
For further details, see the section, "Changes in the Definition of Poverty," in Current Population Reports, Series P- 60, No. 133. The poverty thresholds are increased each year by the same percentage as the annual average Consumer Price Index (CPI). The poverty thresholds are currently adjusted using the annual average CPI-U (1982-84 = 100). This base year has been used since 1988. From 1980 through 1987, the thresholds were adjusted using the CPI-U (1967 = 100). The CPI (1963 = 100) was used to adjust thresholds prior to 1980. For further information on how the poverty thresholds were developed and subsequent changes in them, see Gordon M. Fisher, "The Development and History of the Poverty Thresholds," Social Security Bulletin, vol.55, no.4, Winter 1992, pp. 3-14.
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