In September the U.s. Census Bureau released the Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2017. It reports that 13.9% of Americans lived in poverty in 2017, which is statistically the same as in 2016.
This leads to the obvious question what is - and why is there - a supplemental poverty measure.
The reason is the "official" poverty measure was designed in 1963 and defined as three times the "subsistence food budget" for a family of any given size. Because of data limitations, the "subsistence food budget" was based on 1955 data on food consumption.
If a family's gross income before taxes is less than 3 times the subsistence food budget, the family is considered poor.
This methodology has a number of flaws. For example, It's based on pre-tax income. But bigger issues include is it doesn't factor in other cost of livings (rent, etc.), it doesn't include support programs like food stamps or the earned income tax credit and it assumes the cost of living is same everywhere in the U.S.
It also assumes we eat the same things as we did in 1955 and, relatively speaking, they cost the same.
Due to these problems, the supplemental poverty measure was developed in 2010. The chart below shows how the both the official and supplemental poverty rates from 2009 to 2017.
The good news is the poverty rate has been drifting down since 2011. The bad news is kids 18 and under have the highest poverty rate - 15.6%. This means about 1 in 6 American kids live in poverty.
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