European Measures of Income, Poverty, and Social Exclusion: Recent Developments and Lessons for U.s. Poverty Measurement Professional Practice

As this volume is going to press, the U.S. government seems poised to make the first major changes in the official poverty measure in more than 40 years.1 The official measure was initially formulated in 1963 by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration, who had been asked to develop a gauge of economic need that could provide data useful to the War on Poverty. Orshansky created the poverty measure by multiplying the USDA’s Economy Food Plan for a family of four by three (as the 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey showed that food made up one-third of the after-tax spending of a family of three or more). The Bureau of the Budget adopted this threshold as the official measure of poverty in the United States in 1969. Kenneth Couch, Guest Editor Professional Practice