The Unfinished Pursuit of a Better Poverty Measure
By Peter Coy, The New York Times
(EXCERPT)
I interviewed Indi Dutta-Gupta, the executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy, who worked on the National Academies report. He and his colleague, Elizabeth Lower-Basch, have a brief and positive take on the report. One thing Dutta-Gupta pointed out is that whatever the Census Bureau decides to call the poverty line has no direct impact on spending to fight poverty. That’s up to Congress.
Dutta-Gupta also said that in the debate over absolute versus relative measures of poverty, he’s in the relative camp.
“The whole concept of poverty is specific to a place and time,” he said. “Societies do have expectations and norms.”
Source URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/poverty-measure.html
