No Poverty In America, Depending Upon What Poverty Means

Appalachia U.S.

[From article]
The end result of all of this is that if we measure poverty in the US the same way that the World Bank does for the world then there’s actually no poor people at all inside the United States. That War on Poverty has been fought and we who would aid the poor won. It should be said though that the definitions of poverty used are not quite the same as those used in the domestic political debate even though they are how we describe poverty in other parts of the world.
[. . .]


Appalachia U.S.

So that US number doesn’t include many of the things that we do to try to reduce poverty (things like SNAP, Section 8 vouchers and so on). Our measurements of foreign poverty are after all of the things that their governments do to try to reduce poverty.
[. . .]
Something must be wrong with our figures then and the answer is again that the US numbers are looking at incomes: the foreign numbers are looking at consumption. When we look at the consumption numbers for the American poor we find something very different indeed:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/08/27/by-global-standards-there-are-no-american-poor-all-in-the-us-are-middle-class-or-better/

8/27/2014 @ 12:43PM
By Global Standards There Are No American Poor; All In The US Are Middle Class Or Better

Tim Worstall Contributor