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the Census Bureau adjusts the definition of poverty each year based on the percentage change in the price of the average "basket of goods" that are considered a consumer's minimal requirements. The Census Bureau confirms HHS assertion about the irrelevance of these numbers, stating that "although the thresholds in some sense reflect a families needs, they are intended for use as a statistical yardstick, not as a complete description of what people and families need to live."

Many other nations use calculations that recognize that lifestyle is determined by how the majority of its citizens have become accustomed to living. Their poverty standards are relative to how those earning a median income are living. Relative is clearly the operative word here. The World Bank reports that in 2001 1.1 billion people lived on less than $1 a day and 2.7 billion below $2 a day. Christian Aid reports that one third of deaths in the world today, 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day, are induced by this poverty. Any complaints about an American standard of living in comparison to the other half of the world's population would have to be lodged with great trepidation. However, different standards of living and different expectations of what is minimal naturally occur based on what a person has become accustomed to. The amount an American would have to live on per month according to our thresholds is equivalent to what many others in the world live on for a year. But the question remains, can an American survive on $850 a month?
Regardless of whether either the HHS or the Census Bureau chooses to assign a budget value to these figures, the impoverished would still have to determine how they would divide the funds among their needs. Orshansky herself stated in a 1965 article that "if it is not possible to state unequivocally how much is enough,' it should be possible to assert with confidence how much, on average, is too little." It may be an appropriate time for the federal government to heed her advice.

Learn more about this author, Ariel Lehrer.
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