Census insensibility

The Census Bureau announced Thursday that the nation's poverty rate has been increasing in the past three years (in a case of life imitating e-mail jokes, the Washington Post's account actually includes a variation on the phrase "women and children hardest hit" in its story on the subject).

At first glance, the numbers seem pretty solid. Using the standard by which the government measures poverty, the numbers do seem to be going up. But how good is that measure? Bravo to Neal Boortz for pointing out that the government's standard for poverty is rather meaningless, because it is based on income alone. Middle and upper-class families that choose to live off of existing savings for a time can easily meet the government's definition of poverty.

Sure enough, the Census Bureau's website confirms that poverty is measured in this way. They say that the standard was established by a 1978 OMB directive, but the directive itself states that it was codifying a practice reaching back to the Johnson administration.

Given this definition of poverty, there is no way to attach any significant meaning to the data. So why announce them at all? It is not intended as a tool for the government to use to determine eligibility for handouts. Quoting the Census Bureau site:

Government aid programs do not have to use the official poverty measure as eligibility criteria.

The answer, then, likely rests in how the statistics have actually been used over the past forty years -- as a political tool for increasing government spending. Period.