Background

The federal government began measuring poverty in 1959. During the 1960s President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared a national war on poverty. Researchers realized that very few statistical tools were available to measure the number of Americans who continued to live in poverty in one of the most affluent nations in the world. In order to fight this "war," it had to be determined who was poor and why.

During the early 1960s Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration suggested that the poverty income level be defined as the income sufficient to purchase a minimally adequate amount of goods and services. The necessary data for defining and pricing a full "market basket" of goods was not available then, nor is it available now. Orshansky noted, however, that in 1955 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had published a "Household Food Consumption Survey," which showed that the average family...