A measure of progress
We’ve been eagerly awaiting this: Rourke O’Brien‘s cover story “Beyond the Poverty Line” in the current Stanford Social Innovation Review about the importance of updating the American poverty measure.
It’s a step into the future, the approach he and coauthor David Pedulla describe. One that recognizes that, while an iPod may cost the same in most cities, things that actually impact a family’s life do not (hint: housing > iPods). As O’Brien and Pedulla put it, it’s not just that some areas are more expensive. It’s that they’re different in ways that actually make a difference in any attempted problem-solving: “in some cities (like Los Angeles) it is essential to have a car, whereas in other cities (like New York) most people use public transportation.”
They also recommend a poverty measure that (shocker) actually differentiates between and reflects the different circumstances of those who are not getting by:
Is the person unable to afford rent and thus living on the street? Is the family unable to purchase enough food so the adults in the household are going hungry? Are they making ends meet by not purchasing badly needed medications? In each of these instances, different programs would be needed to alleviate the problem.
Imagine for a moment how much smarter and more effectively counties could help, if they knew how exactly who was poor–and in what way. Not to mention the subtle but important impact that a smarter measure would have on our perceptions of poverty:
If our goal is to achieve a better measure of well-being in order to diagnose human needs and design effective solutions, no line—no matter how thoughtful or sound—will do. Given the dynamic nature of poverty, social service organizations and policymakers require more context, more nuance, and, quite simply, more data. The data we need already exist. The problem is that data are scattered across dozens of government and nonprofit organizations and require experts to access and interpret. We are living in the information age—it’s time that the socially minded community asked for more of it. It is time to move beyond the poverty line.
It’s about really seeing what’s there and not letting ourselves turn away; it’s about knowing better than to think poverty is black-and-white.
The entire piece should be required reading for any American who cares about hungry children and/or the non-bureaucratic, effective use of taxpayer dollars. As I said last November much less elegantly, the current poverty measure is an accident older than the lava lamp. It’s time for a do-over.
The private roundtable California’s Asset program hosted so that key Sacramento policymakers could learn about New York’s new measure was an important introduction to the nuts and bolts to such a change. And two bills that get at this issue are moving through California’s legislature right now: SB 1084 would establish a 2-year bipartisan public/private Task Force to, among other things, use the Insight Center’s Self-Sufficiency Standard and Elder Index for California to improve the state’s poverty policies. And AB 2114 would require state and local aging agencies to use the Elder Index when crafting plans to meet elder needs. Not exactly the same as what O’Brien recommends, but an important change nonetheless.
Together, these steps to re-color the poverty measure are no small measure of success.
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