The u.s. poverty line: a titne for change

E. Chambers In this article, the author outlines the history and rationale for an official poverty line. He points out the failures of the current poverty line and provides a formula that can be used to derive a more useful criterion to measure poverty in the United States. A poverty line is a measure of the amount of money society believes is necessary for a person to live at a mini-mum level of sUbsistence or at a level consistent with a socially decent stan-dard of life. This concept has a long history in the study and debate on the social problem of poverty and extends back to William Booth and Seebohm Rountree in nineteenth century En-gland. 1 Its use then, as now, was threefold: first, as a tool for research into the extent and character of pov-erty; second, as a tool in the analyses of policy decisions on and programmatic solutions to poverty; and third, as a concrete reference point around which to form judgments on the cash benefit levels of various programs. In general, minimum nutrition levels have played a large part in the selection of standards on which poverty lines are based. Pov-erty lines can be, and often are, con-structed for different types of house-holds that vary by size and by the ages of their members. The current U.S. poverty line wa