Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The Mismeasure of Poverty

"I don't want to learn about how the official poverty statistics."

If you read this post then I will post the Youtube video where Britney Spears forces us to see that Kevin Federline is like 29 times smarter than we ever gave him credit for being.

The Mismeasure of Poverty:

"Just months after its debut in May 1965 the War on Poverty's new Office of Economic Opportunity designated the measure as its unofficial working definition of poverty.

By August 1969, the Bureau of the Budget had stipulated that the poverty thresholds used in calculating American poverty rates would constitute the federal government's official statistical definition for poverty. It has remained so ever since."

The author of this report gives a nice overview of the historical circumstances that surrounded the creation of the OPR. The author then goes on to treat the purpose of measuring an absolute level of poverty as the holy grail of poverty stats.

Did you know that people in 1120 didn't have running water? I guess there aren't any poor people left now, because using a relative measure of poverty is for liberals. And we know wacked they are.

Libertarians might enjoy the report as well...mostly because they are heartless.

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