

19.9% of US children live in poverty - dizzy
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/american-children-lack-equal-opportunity-by-joseph-e--stiglitz-2014-12

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spikels
Stiglitz has a political agenda so his definition of poverty is not what you
might think (i.e. lack of food or shelter) but "relative poverty" \- defined
as income below 50% of median adjusted for family size (which are larger for
poor families). It would be nice if he mentioned this...

Edit: Also this is based on (pre-tax?) income before transfers such as
subsidized food, housing and healthcare which distorts comparisons (i.e. in
the US, unlike almost every rich countries, only the poor get free or
subsidized healthcare).

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dizzy
That isn't true. The data comes from the US Census Bureau. If you look at the
report he linked, appendix B goes in to details.

The overall poverty rate given is approx 15%.

~~~
spikels
Was referring to the methodology in the UNICEF report Stiglitz linked[1].

While not a relative poverty measure the regular Census methodology you refer
to has all the other weaknesses I mentioned but the biggest is it is based on
a rather arbitrary level established in the 1960s then updated based on broad
inflation. Not clear how relevant these thresholds are today - may be worse or
better.

BTW - Census also has a relative poverty measure, known as the "supplemental
poverty measure".

[1] [http://www.unicef-
irc.org/publications/pdf/rc10_eng.pdf](http://www.unicef-
irc.org/publications/pdf/rc10_eng.pdf)

