Poverty Measures

Well, they passed a law in '64
To give to those who ain't got, a little more
--Bruce Hornsby & The Range

Dan Mitchell's analysis reinforces a lesson that I learned some time ago. Measures of 'poverty' are often not what you think. Rather than reflecting the level of resources available to a person to sustain a barely functional life, modern poverty measures tend to reflect income or wealth disparty--the difference between, say, the bottom 20% and the top 20% w.r.t. annual income.

Such differences do not measure poverty. They merely provide a basis for some to argue that resources need to be taken from some and given to others in the name of 'fairness.'

They measure the potential for wealth redistribution.