Sixty years ago, LBJ declared "War on Poverty." The results are in and poverty in the US has mostly been vanquished. New research in the prestigious Journal of Political Economy points out that the official poverty rate is hugely biased upward. The authors compare this to a measures of the "Absolute Full-Income Poverty" level that includes various cash transfer programs, adjusts for inflation, and adjusts for changes in consumption bundles. All tolled, the poverty rate fell from 19.5% in 1963 to 1.6% in 2019. Yippee!
Alas, we may not want to celebrate quite yet. First, those in that bottom 1.6% are truly destitute. I cannot imagine the difficulties these people face.
Second, since inflation adjusted GDP per capita tripled of this period, the rest of us have become quite a bit more wealthy.
The burden to the rest of us of subsidizing the poor does not bite as much. Perhaps public policy should be directed at the lowest X% of the population rather just those below $X per year. We can quibble of the appropriate Xs.
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